


Movement Recalibration

by theLoyalRoyalGuard



Series: Dual Process Theory [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Cassian needs a hug, Droidcaptain, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Cassian Andor, POV K-2SO, Physical Disability, Post-Battle of Scarif, Post-Battle of Yavin, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Robot Feels, Robot/Human Relationships, Slow Burn, don't worry Kay will give him one, obviously because Cassian is the PTSD poster child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2019-11-14 04:46:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 25,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18045749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLoyalRoyalGuard/pseuds/theLoyalRoyalGuard
Summary: It's annoyingly difficult for a droid to travel alone. Especially a 2.16 meter tall, ex-Imperial security droid. He has to find Cassian.Because he is 100% certain that, if Cassian doesn't want to be found, no one but Kay is going to find him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the work of the wonderfully talented [Bright_Elen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bright_Elen)
> 
> Thousand thanks to mac and Lillie for the beta/sensitivity read for Cassian's physical disability. <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: mention of suicidal possibilities

It's annoyingly difficult for a droid to travel alone. Especially a 2.16 meter tall, ex-Imperial security droid. K-2SO isn't used to the necessity of traveling alone, or using public, rather than private, transportation. Well, rebellion-owned, at least. But there is no rebellion now. There is a republic. 

Even in a republic, he has to do an awful lot of explaining to strangers, and truth be told, Kay doesn't like strangers very much. Actually, Kay doesn't like approximately 98% of people he's met, ever. 

Which is why he is alone, looking for the one person he did like, at least 99% of the time.

He has, by now, explained 13.5 times to different customs officials that, yes, he is unaccompanied, and no, he does not have an owner, thank you very much. He has explained to 5 nervous security personnel on 3 planets that, yes, he has been reprogrammed, and no, he is not going to attack anyone.

Well, unless they try to detain him. So far, no one has, so he's left that part out.

And every explanation, every new person whose organic body language he has to process and interpret, reminds him more and more of why he has to find the one he's looking for. His circuits whirr tiredly. He has to find Cassian.

Because he is 100% certain that, if Cassian doesn't want to be found, no one but Kay is going to find him.

All of his substantial non-essential processing power is currently devoted to the task. Narrowing down all his data on Cassian Andor, spy of a rebellion that no longer has anything to rebel against, to pinpoint the system, planet, exact coordinates, where he is most likely to be. 

The thought that keeps short-circuiting his search is _why_ Cassian might have gone away.

And the not-insignificant fear that Kay will be too late to stop him.

~~

The customs line in yet another dingy port makes him wish he had just stolen a ship somewhere. This would all be easier in his own ship, and so much less traceable. But he doesn't really need to be untraceable now, he reminds himself. In fact, being very obvious might work in his favor, if Cassian is somewhere he can get news. How many KX droids, after all, are going to be gallivanting around the galaxy? 

Because the root of all this mess is very simple.

Cassian doesn't know that Kay is still functional. Alive, as he would think of it. Cassian believes Kay suffered a permanent shutdown six months ago, lost, beyond retrieval and repair.

And Cassian will never forgive himself for that. Kay knows this with 100% certainty.

But a droid doesn't need very much to come back, just enough uncorrupted data, and Kay had that. Just like he had the back-up files and programs Cassian made for him. Because Cassian thinks of everything but himself.

The trouble with organics is that they don't come back. Ever. There are no back-up files for Cassian Andor.

Which is why, if this line doesn't start to move, Kay is going to resort to some of his originally programming to _make_ it move.

~~

Finally, Kay steps off the transport shuttle onto Eslar III, the planet he has decided with 68% certainty Cassian will be. Since Kay didn't find him on any of the three planets he had tried. It's a chilly Outer Rim world that the empire never bothered with and the rebellion never used. A good place for a man who wants to avoid all memories of both. The only major port is built primarily of the iron-hard, resinous wood from the trees that cover 5/8 of the planet. The other 3/8 are freshwater lakes in summer and ice in winter.

Kay had run a great many simulations on the transport to predict where Cassian might be on Eslar III, if he is here at all, but none of his conclusions were very high probability. Cassian is notoriously difficult to predict when in hiding. Kay refused to entertain the predictions that include likelihoods of mortality.

Because the locals refused to open their forests to logging, Eslar had only two sources of income. A very limited market on trophy hunting, and casinos. Since Cassian has no interest in big game, but did have a need for high levels of stimulation and distraction. So Kay tried the casinos.

"No droids," says a local bouncer, easily as tall as Kay himself, long-snouted and heavily furred. Galactic basic obviously did not come easily to that configuration of jaw. 

"I am not here to play," Kay protests. 

"Then no entry to non-customers."

"I'm looking for someone." Kay's vocoder whirrs with annoyance.

"Look somewhere else."

"Hey, bolt-bucket," a twi'lek shouts behind him, "you're holding up the line!"

"If I could just see the room," Kay says. He doesn't want to explain himself one more time, but he will if he has to.

"No droids," repeats the bouncer, in a growl that suggests next time he won't be so polite about it.

He gets the same answer at each of the four most popular casinos, and then at the seedier ones. Of course, patrons could use droids to cheat, Kay understands that, but he didn't want to cheat. He wants Cassian. He runs several fantastical scenarios about how easily Cassian would find a way to get them inside, but he doesn't find the simulations nearly as comforting as he hoped.

The streets empty as the night comes in swift and cold. He'll have to find somewhere safe to power down for the night, and soon.

There’s no sign of Cassian the next day, either. He finds a remote dataport and plugs in for a while, scanning frequencies used on the small planet. But even on a world with a relatively low population density, and a far lower population of humans, it’s hard to find one man who doesn’t appear to want to be found. Kay searches for every code and sign Cassian has ever left for him, any clue he might have left behind.

But as on each planet, moon, and inhabited asteroid he’s tried before, he’s not having any luck finding his singularly annoying little human here, either.

The fear that he is too late begins to take up a distressing amount of processing power.

Because he's thinking about that, as well as running through the maps of the city he'd downloaded earlier, he barely notices the man in the hoverchair turning, his back to Kay, towards one of the casinos. Only unconscious peripheral optic receptors from a barely glimpsed sliver of profile. Sparks zip through his circuits. 

He turns in time to see the chair disappear through the casino door.

No. He must be mistaken. 

Though he's not sure if he wishes he is or isn't.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: mention of suicidal possibilities, gambling, alcohol

The reek and noise of the gambling den washes over Cassian as he pays his entry fee and settles in at his usual table. Somebody nearby is smoking something that makes the back of his throat burn. People know him by now, greet him by the name he gave them. A new cover for a new existence. 

It’s all right. Not like he much cared for the person he’d been before.

This one is better. 

He throws down his chips and tries to focus on the game. Gambling always makes him think of Kay. A droid, after all, has a perfect sabacc face, and Kay in particularly could predict outcomes faster than any organic could think. So long as he didn’t talk, he could beat just about anyone, any time. Not that anyone but Cassian would play with him, before Rogue One…

His hands start to shake, jerking involuntary tremors. No doubt his opponents think he’s giving away something, but they’ll guess wrong. Cassian has a good sabacc face, too. 

Kriff, he misses Kay.

Can’t think about that, can’t go down that path, no he’s here to escape it. Even if gambling makes him think about the very person he’s trying to escape. Irony and penance are hard masters. Almost as hard as the rebellion.

They don’t need him anymore. No one needs him. Not even Kay, because Kay is…

A twi’lek offers him a drink, and he takes it. This version of himself drinks. 

And wins the first game. 

~~

He hadn’t originally come to Eslar III to gamble. He’d come to disappear, and gambling had proved a useful distraction. It gave him something to do at night and, at least, a little, kept away the dragging despair that caught up with him if he stayed still for too long.

The nightmares of fire and smoke and blood. Of Kay’s body shielding his. Of the airlift carrying him away and leaving Kay behind. He wasn’t actually conscious for that part, or he’d never have let them, but in his dreams, he’s awake, immobile and mute and helpless.

Jyn had foiled his attempt to get himself killed before the war ended. Not suicide, exactly, he’s too proud for that even now, it’s why he’s here and still alive, but he’d gotten reckless after losing Kay. Even he knows it made him stupid. At least Jyn didn’t die saving him, too.

At least he knows it will take Jyn years to find him out here, if she ever does. If she bothers to look for him. Even she and Bodhi together can’t scour the whole of the Outer Rim on their own.

He takes another drink, trying to focus. Alcohol, at least, blunts the edges of his senses a little, makes the noise and smoke more bearable. 

An arm drops over his shoulders, and his body goes rigid, every muscle frozen to keep from driving his elbow into his attacker’s solar plexus. Because the woman next to him isn’t an attacker. She peers at his cards and smirks. 

“I been hearing real interesting rumors about you,” says Aal Madha, the owner of the establishment, her artificially scarlet hair sliding down over his chest as she leans in close to him. 

“That so?” His pulse skips so fast, he wants nothing more than to put as much distance between them as possible, though if that’s from the unwelcome touch or the unwelcome attention, he can’t say.

No one can know. No one can be looking for him. He takes a careful breath, and another, to steady himself.

“‘Bout what you do with your winnings,” she says, and he relaxes. That’s fine. Annoying, but fine.

“I don’t see how it’s anyone’s business. Money’s mine when I walk out the door.” He winces. “Figuratively.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t have a professional curiosity. Most people don’t go giving away their winnings.” Her continued touch and proximity begins to bother him all over again. She’s wearing some kind of perfume. It’s all too much. He leans away.

It’s a small betrayal of his own needs, one he would never have allowed before. But this isn’t before. He’s not that man.

He’s not anyone he’s ever been before.

“I just like the game,” he says casually. “Care for a round? Me against the house.”

~~

It’s nearly dawn when Cassian leaves the casino. He’s buzzed and aches in every muscle and bone, grateful for once he doesn’t have to walk back to the place he’s staying. It’s not home, he has no home, it’s just a little room he rents on the ground floor with a few credits of his winnings. It’s got a fresher and a kitchenette and a bed. He doesn’t need much more than that. A few more credits go to feeding him.

Aal was right about that: he gives away the rest. There are all sorts of organizations that get no government funding on planets like these. His money goes to housing, food, and education for children and their families. He makes all his donations anonymously, under a variety of names.

So how the kriff did Aal figure it out?

He’ll worry about that… not in the morning, because it’s morning now, but later. After he makes some attempt at sleep.

He tries to take care of himself, when he remembers to, when he can bring himself to feel like it matters, for Kay. It’s what Kay would want. 

When he can’t get out of bed, it’s not Jyn or Bodhi or the Guardians he imagines. 

It’s Kay. The subtle inflection of his vocoder broadcasting fond annoyance. Kay wouldn’t have any patience for his self pity or despair. Kay wouldn’t take his own death as an excuse for Cassian to let himself waste away.

Even though he’s so, so tired.

The hoverchair, at least, is a decent model, and takes his aching body smoothly over the uneven streets. He finally took enough repeated damage for certain vital parts of him to throw a rebellion of their own, and while he’s officially on a wait-list for more effective methods of modifying his new limitations, they’re going to have a hell of a time finding him when his name comes up.

Or whatever name Draven signed him up under.

Thinking of parts of his body being replaced with metal makes him think of Kay again. How it would make him more like his oldest and closest friend. How much that would hurt far more than surgery and therapy. And because he’s a little drunk, and thinking about Kay, he’s a split second too late in registering the enormous shadow that looms out of the darkness at him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buckle up for some feels

The figure in the chair is confirmed to be Cassian in 0.5 seconds, from a mere 2% probability to a full 100%, as it reflexively pulls a small hidden blaster on Kay. Kay’s olfactory sensors detect a cocktail of drugs and liquor on him, but the hand holding the blaster is perfectly steady.

Except that he doesn’t fire. He simply stares.

Kay holds out his hands, the way humans do, to show he’s not attacking. In the dark, one KX looks much like any other. And he is also aware that coming back from the dead, so to speak, is something organics find shocking. So it’s no surprise that, despite his unwavering grip on the blaster, Cassian’s heart rate has spiked alarmly.

“Cassian.” Kay steps forward. 

_”Kay?”_ Cassian whispers, his voice harsh and broken. The blaster slips between his fingers and clatters to the street. Kay closes the rest of the distance between them, bends, and delicately picks up the little weapon.

“Of course,” Kay says. Retrieving the blaster has brought him very close indeed to the chair, and Cassian actually recoils into it, curling his body away. Kay straightens and offers him back the blaster. “The chances of any other Imperial droid locating you are so improbably small as to be negligible.” 

Cassian has never flinched away from him like this before. At loud noises or when he particularly doesn’t want to be touched, yes, but not with that particular expression. The widening and dilation of his eyes, the slight tension of jaw and lips. Like fear. Cassian has never been afraid of Kay, not even the first time they met, when he definitely had reason to be afraid.

“Of course,” Cassian echoes hollowly.

“You look extremely unwell,” Kay observes, cataloguing the many ways in which Cassian has changed in the intervening six months, two weeks, and four days of their separation. He decides it’s time for him to take charge of the situation. “And you smell very bad. Show me where you are staying.”

“Kay,” Cassian repeats, and if he had circuits, Kay would have thought he was stuck cycling on one of them. As it is, something is clearly malfunctioning in his organic processes. 

“Cassian, your heart rate is dangerously high for being at rest, you need to take deep breaths and-” he breaks off as Cassian slumps forward in the chair and buries his face in his hands. At first, Kay thinks he might have fainted, which is worrying enough, but he’s been with Cassian long enough to recognize the suppressed stuttering of his shoulders as how Cassian cries.

Which is more worrying by far.

Very, very carefully, not wanting to startle him, Kay lays a hand on Cassian’s hunched back. There are times when the small organic body is desperate for physical contact, and Cassian is very good at ignoring that directive. If physical contact with a being made of durasteel instead of flesh is, perhaps, suboptimal, it is certainly preferable to self-denial. Kay has always been happy to offer whatever he can in this regard, no matter how long-suffering he presents himself.

Cassian’s tight sobs expand into full body tremors under Kay’s hand, and then he moves fast enough to surprise even Kay. He launches out of the chair and up to collide with Kay’s chassis, throwing his arms around him. Kay’s height makes it necessary for him to put his arms around Cassian so he won’t simply slide off.

“You were _dead,_ ” Cassian finally manages to say, his voice rough like static interference. “They left you!” There’s a soft thunk as the side of Cassian’s fist connects with Kay’s shoulder. Then what’s left of his voice cracks apart as he repeats, “They left you. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, Kay, I couldn’t stop them. When I woke up, it was too late…”

“I am not troubled by your inability to act while unconscious, Cassian. I do not hold you responsible for what happened. And, clearly, I am not dead.”

Cassian’s warmth is beginning to soak into Kay’s plating, which means that conversely, the cold of Kay’s metal must be soaking into Cassian.

“I am going to put you back in your chair now,” he says. “We should not continue this display where others might observe us.”

Very gently, he lowers Cassian back down, noticing among his other detriments that Cassian has lost significant weight that he cannot afford, as well as muscle tone.

“Really,” he grumbles, “I’m gone for less than a standard year, and this is what happens to you without me?”

Cassian makes a shaky little sound that might have been called a laugh, with a slight stretch of imagination Kay chooses to accept. 

“I knew you’d be disappointed in me,” he says. “Come on. It’s this way. There’s even a charging port, if you need one. Just be careful not to overdraw it. The infrastructure isn’t great around here.”

“I’ve noticed,” Kay says, and modifies his stride to match the slow glide of the chair.

~~

The room where Cassian is staying is almost as disappointing as his physical state. Although it is at least clean, and predictably well secured. Cassian glides over the door of the ‘fresher and stands, one hand against the wall for support as he looks back at Kay.

“You’re… still going to be here when I get out, right?”

“I have no requirement to be elsewhere. I have achieved my goal of finding you.”

One corner of Cassian’s mouth twitches. That’s a good sign. His vitals have also improved significantly since the shock of their reunion. Kay watches him vanish into the ‘fresher. Running water starts up a few moments later, leaving Kay to explore.

The space is going to be cramped for both of them, but they’ve shared smaller. Kay can’t find anything wrong with his security systems, either. Even in the middle of nowhere, even barely taking care of himself, Cassian still keeps well protected. It’s a particular paradox that Kay has always found amusing, if at times frustrating, that Cassian pays so much attention to security, and still manages not to sleep enough even in spaces he’s secured.

Kay used to think Cassian would make a decent droid, given his single-minded drive towards particular initiatives, but at least droids know when to recharge.

He’s examining the chair’s hardware when the water shuts off with a clang and groan of pipes. Carefully, he nudges it back to where Cassian had left it, frustrated that he still hasn’t determined precisely what injuries led Cassian to requiring an assisted mobility device. The chair doesn’t have the sort of processing to tell him things like that. It’s a very simple machine, and can’t tell him any more about the human that uses it than a speeder could.

The ‘fresher door opens, and Kay straightens up to tower over Cassian where he stands in the opening, leaning on the frame. He’s half dressed, with the addition of the thin black brace Medical gave him after Scarif, and a clean shirt hanging over his shoulder. His collarbones jut from under the cloth. 

Kay makes a disgusted noise.

“Where do you keep your food?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More feels for you

Despite Kay’s promise, Cassian half expects him not to be there when he gets out of the ‘fresher. Maybe this is all a dream. Maybe Aal slipped something in his drink and he’s having an elaborate hallucination. He sits on the bench and runs the water hot enough to hurt, until his skin reddens from the heat and the steam starts to make him feel light-headed.

Well, he hasn’t woken up yet.

He tries to imagine, as he shuts off the water, how Kay would tell him the probability of this being a dream. But, really, Kay would probably just make some sarcastic remark about it. And then the realization that he can, technically, just _ask_ Kay right _now_ nearly floors him. Kay is in his room, just on the other side of a door. 

He leans back heavily against the cooling wall of the ‘fresher and takes several deep breaths. 

Once he’s recovered, he goes through the uncomfortable process of putting on trousers and the light brace that fits around his lower back below his ribs. It's harder to put on than take off. The shirt, he just tosses over his shoulder until he’s back in the chair. 

And when he opens the door, Kay is right there. The enormous black hulk of his chassis dominates the little room on the height of his slender legs, and never has any sight been more welcome or more wonderful. He rakes his gaze over Kay, noting the scuffs and dents in his plating, the slightly different color on the lower parts of both legs and one arm like he was either repainted or had the limbs replaced.

He’s also sharply aware of Kay’s optics making the same analysis of him, cataloguing his new deficiencies to add to all his old ones. 

Kay makes a staticy noise of annoyance and turns away. “Where do you keep your food?”

“You got new parts,” Cassian says, taking the awkward, unsteady step from the doorway to the chair. He sinks into it and pulls his shirt on over his head.

“A replacement model, actually. You are not answering my question.”

Cassian smoothes down the open collar. He’s exhausted, though at least he’s mostly sober now, and he’s much, much too awake to consider going to bed.

“The compartment on your left. Yes, that one. But I’m not–”

“Catch.”

He can either catch the meal bar suddenly spinning on a perfect trajectory towards his head, or let it hit him. He catches it.

“–hungry.”

“Cassian. I did not track you across the galaxy in order to babysit you.”

That familiar voice, laden with bored annoyance and fondness even through a vocoder, fills him with warmth. Obediently, he strips the wrapper off the bar and takes a bite, then grimaces.

“You had to give me iljaa fruit?”

“You’re the one who bought them. If you hate iljaa fruit so much, why get it?”

The proper answer is because they’re cheap, or possibly that he didn’t actually notice the flavor he was buying. Probably some combination of the two.

Instead of answering, he leans his elbow on one knee while he eats and looks up at Kay. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”

“No more than you,” Kay responds. “Why are you on Eslar III?”

“I should think that’s obvious. The real question is, how the kriff did you find me? No, the real question is, how the kriff are you alive?” The memory still stings, fresh as a live wire under his skin, a constant current of loss and horror even now that Kay is standing in front of him. A wound that will take a long time to heal. Though maybe not, now, so long as some of his others.

“An Imperial salvaged my core from the blast site. He attempted to datamine it. I resisted. Don’t look so horrified.” Cassian, who hadn’t realized he looked horrified, quickly wipes his expression blank. “You are equating datamining with your organic perception of torture and interrogation. I assure you, it is nothing of the kind. I am not traumatized.”

“How nice for you,” Cassian mutters. Kay ignores him.

“You are now going to ask how I went from there to here, but it is very boring. The technician was not prepared for me to have free will. I downloaded myself into the droid assisting him, incapacitated him, and eventually made my way to a spare KX model in storage. It would have been much more fun with you.” He almost sounds like he’s pouting. 

“But by the time I got back…” Kay’s voice goes quieter, fuzzed at the edges with interference, “you were gone. Jyn kept them from shooting me. But you weren’t there.” Now he definitely sounds petulant. And hurt. “She didn’t know where you were. No one did.” The white light of his optics flutters. 

“So you went looking for me.” Cassian sounds just as staticy, his throat tight with a flood of feeling he can’t name and can barely restrain. 

“I found you,” Kay says firmly. “No help from you.”

“I’m sorry,” he says again. He seems to be apologizing a lot tonight, but certainly all his apologies are due. “It’s just, you see, the rebellion… there’s no place for me there now. No one… needs me anymore.”

Spies, especially the kind that did the sort of things Cassian had done, tend to end up on trial for war crimes after the wars are over. As if peace suddenly makes his actions questionable. As if, from the high vantages of victory, suddenly no one can see that they wouldn’t have gotten there without what he’s done. Not that Cassian is running from justice for the blood he’s spilled. He’s not a coward and he’s always been ready to die for the rebellion, but he’s not about to be some political game piece shuffled around to prove other people's points about honor and justice until someone decides to imprison or execute him. 

No, what he’s really running from is loss and shame and guilt. They don’t need him anymore, especially in his current condition, and he’d rather be judged than pitied. 

“They’re decommissioning all Imperial security droids,” Kay points out. “No one needs me anymore, either.”

Cassian’s head jerks up. The words hurt, physically, deep inside. “I do,” he says fervently. “I need you, Kay.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: mild violence

“I’m going out.” Kay has been in Cassian’s glorified box of an apartment for three days. Every night Cassian goes out to the casinos. By day, he works odd jobs fixing security systems, which Kay finds amusing. He’s enjoying annoying Cassian by not telling him why it tickles his circuits that a man’s whose skillset specialized in breaking security systems now repairs them. “Coming?”

He asks every night.

Every night, Kay says something like, “They do not like to let me in.”

And every night, Cassian shrugs and replies with a version of, “I’ll convince them. Who would rob an invalid of his assistant?”

If Kay could have could have rolled his eyes, he would have. 

“It is very boring to watch you drink when I can’t join in the game.” Not that he actually has any intention of letting Cassian go alone. 

Or any intention of being separated from him for any length of time, at least until they are thoroughly sick of each other’s company and need a break. It’s been known to happen. 

“I thought you said you weren’t here to babysit me,” Cassian says, pulling his jacket around his shoulders. It’s brown leather with a blue patch on the elbow where it was damaged in a long-ago shoot-out. There’s nothing about the jacket to distinguish it as Rebellion gear, because it’s not. 

It’s one of the few things Cassian ever bought for himself. Kay takes it as a good sign of his mental well-being that he didn’t throw it away. 

~~

Kay entertains himself making predictions about the gamblers and trying to read their body cues. Since body language differs widely across species, and even from individual to individual, his catalogue of postures and expressions and little nervous tics grows constantly. It’s one skill Cassian naturally has better than his. 

Their survival has often depended on it. 

But droids are better at recognizing patterns, and if Cassian has noticed the one Kay’s been picking up on the last few nights, he hasn’t mentioned it. Five people tonight alone have looked between Kay by the wall and Cassian at one of the gaming tables, and exhibited various forms of fearful and/or aggressive expressions and body language.

It could be because Cassian wins more than he loses, but Kay doubts that’s the whole reason.

And maybe he did notice, because it’s not long before Cassian excuses himself, beckong to Kay as he glides to the door. Three different people bought him drinks, but Kay can tell in an instant whatever he drank of them wasn’t enough to affect him. 

He has not, to Kay’s relief, gotten drunk since their reunion. 

On their way out, Cassian flashes him the tiny smile that is not any of his practiced ones. No, this one is the rarest of all in his catalogue of Cassian’s smiles, the real one that crinkles the corners of his eyes more than it curves his lips. The one that makes him look, for just an instant, slightly less haunted. It sends a little warm cascade through his circuits. 

Cassian is doing better already, and it’s because of Kay’s presence. That is the logical conclusion of this dataset, even if his study is still in its early stages, and it pleases Kay.

They don’t stay long at the next place, either. A big Trandoshan takes offense to Cassian beating him twice in a row, and though Kay offers to intervene, Cassian just shakes his head. 

“Let’s not make a scene.”

“But I like making a scene,” Kay retorts, although quietly, on their way out. “I haven’t gotten to use my security protocols in months.”

“Let’s hope you continue not to need them,” Cassian says. And maybe it’s that, or their general streak of good luck, that calls up trouble.

A figure, human, masculine, peels off from the dark outside wall of the seedy little casino, its neon casting a flash of blue light across his haggard face. The eerie glow makes him look wild, and his mussed hair and drunken stagger doesn’t do anything to diminish the appearance. 

Cassian speeds up, though it’s still aggravatingly slow compared to Kay’s long strides. The footsteps speed up behind them, too. 

“We are being followed,” Kay points out helpfully.

“Hey!” The man’s shout rings off the walls of the narrow street. “Stop and face me. Or are you a coward?”

Cassian slows, starts to say something about money, and then a blaster shot lights up the street in a red flash. It glances off the chair and leaves a black socket in the far wall. In the time it takes Kay to arrest his own momentum, the chair lurches to a halt, and the man catches up at the kind of headlong plunging run only the very drunk can achieve. 

He grabs Cassian by the back of his collar and drags him to the ground. “Imperial bantha shit, I’m gonna blow your kriffing brains out!” 

It happens very fast, and Cassian is between Kay and the angry drunk, shoved to his knees on the half-frozen mud, hands raised and empty with the muzzle of the blaster pressed to the back of his skull. It’s been a while since he was in a position like that, and it takes Kay a fraction of a second to realize, this time, Cassian _can’t_ fight back. 

But he doesn’t argue or plead, either. He just says, softly, “Kay.” And Kay doesn’t bother calculating how fast the drunk might be able to pull the trigger or whether or not he’s really going to, or anything so mundane as that. 

“I don’t think you want to do that,” he says. “I will kill you if you harm him.” 

“Yeah, that’s just like you Imps, all you know is threats.”

“He is not Imperial.” Kay takes a step forward. 

“Don’t move!” The drunk shakes Cassian hard, and his hands aren’t very steady, with his finger already on the trigger. Under the cover of being shaken, Kay sees Cassian right hand drop, knows exactly what he’s going to do. 

Because Cassian will always fight back.

They move at the same moment, Cassian grabbing the man’s ankle to yank his foot out from under him, and Kay lunges, making use of every centimeter of his long reach, to snap the man’s wrist in his grip. Cassian collapses forward, but he catches the blaster as it falls and pulls it under him and out of reach. Not that the drunk is going for it now. Screaming curses and hatred, he runs the moment Kay releases him. 

Slowly, Kay crouches down beside his danger-prone human. “Cassian?” 

“I’m… fine.” A reluctant pause. “Help me up? Please.” 

Kay takes him gently under the arms and straightens his legs, servos whirring as he lifts Cassian to his feet. Cassian keeps a tight grip on his hand as he examines the chair. 

“Kriff. I think he damaged it.” He rubs his face with his free hand, and Kay is glad to see he shows no sign of injury or trauma, just annoyance. Maybe there’s something a little sad about someone who’s had a blaster to his head enough times he stops being affected by it. He does sound a little distressed, however, when he adds, “I don’t have the parts to fix this.”

“Then we will take it to a mechanic tomorrow.” Kay finds himself rather surprisingly distracted by the grip on his hand. This is hardly the first time Cassian has needed him for physical support, or made gestures of the same kind of casual intimacy he occasionally shares with other organics. That is, in fact, one of the things Kay has always appreciated about him, the fact that he doesn’t appear to regard Kay’s synthetic status as setting him apart from everyone else he interacts with. It makes some of his glaring flaws more bearable.

“This is going to be a problem,” Cassian says, one hand still to his face, muffling his voice. He’s probably talking to himself, but Kay answers him anyway.

“You will require my assistance with mobility until your chair is fixed. That is a service I am temporarily willing to provide.”

Cassian shakes his head. “Not that. We attacked a civilian.”

“He attacked us,” Kay protests, indignant. “We defended ourselves. Well, you. We defended you.” 

“And now he’s going to tell everyone he knows he had his arm broken by an Imperial droid and an Imperial fugitive,” Cassian says, sounding increasingly weary. His grip on Kay’s hand tightens by 27%.

“But that isn’t true.” Organics’ propensity for telling tall tales baffles him. They are not factual, and therefore irrelevant.

“Since when,” says the ex-spy, “has the truth ever mattered?”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The mysterious Aal Madha makes an appearance

Truth is, Cassian isn’t nearly as all right with having a blaster to his head as he’d like to pretend. 

For the first time in days, his sleep is shallow and disturbed again. He can’t get comfortable, and his back flares with pain every time he tries to roll over. He drifts through the kind of warped half dreams he usually associates with fevers and sedatives. 

He’s on Eadu again, soaked with rain and shivering, staring down at the distant platform. Only it’s not Galen Erso between the crosshairs, it’s Jyn. His finger squeezes the trigger, and this time he can’t stop it, he can’t control his own body, can’t choose not to follow the order...

The man in the white cloak looms out of his dreams, framed against a pristine blue sky above the Citadel tower, blaster raised. When he fires, the blast tears apart an entire world in a halo of molten rock, and Cassian watches Alderaan ripped to shreds like Jedha, and knows it’s his fault. He knows he should have picked up the trail faster, he knows he should have gotten the plans sooner. The weight of two billion deaths pulls him down and he’s falling, falling… 

His back hits the strut, and he jerks awake from the nightmare, gasping, disoriented. Breathing in silent, shallow gasps, he tries to remember where he is, _when_ he is. His back throbs with dull pulses of pain, from lumbar down into his thighs. Old pain renewed by the pre-dawn bit of violence. 

Looking wildly around the tiny room, his attention snags on the shadow in the corner. The comforting sight of Kay in front of the charging port, perfectly still, optics dark. Cassian eases his breath out in a long sigh. Kay isn’t gone. Jyn isn’t dead.

Alderaan is still destroyed, but there’s nothing he can do about that now. 

Just having Kay in the room grounds Cassian. That cold metal presence is, to him, the safest thing in the world. Where Kay is, he can breathe. 

When he tries, as quietly as possible, to get up and make his way to the ‘fresher, leaning on the wall as he goes, the pale lights flicker on. The soft, familiar sounds of processors and servos starts warming up, so quiet most people wouldn’t even notice it.

“I’m all right,” Cassian says preemptively. “I just need to… you know.” 

When he gets back from the ‘fresher, face washed, teeth cleaned, still running a comb through his hair, Kay is crouched down next to his chair. It looks like an extremely awkward position, as the droid pokes around the melted portion of the covering. They’d barely made it home that morning, the hoverchair limping along and Cassian compensating for its continual, gradual turn to the right.

“How bad is it?” Cassian asks, sinking gratefully down on the edge of his bed. There aren’t any other seats in the room, because, well, he didn’t need any until now. 

“The right motor is burned out, and the steering shaft is half melted,” Kay says. “Structurally, it is suitable to be a stationary chair, but not much else.”

“Fantastic,” Cassian says. “Time to find a mechanic.”

~~

Getting to the mechanic isn’t any better than getting home before had been. The chair is slower, and needs constant correction. There’s a slow, fluttering panic beginning to rise in Cassian’s chest, one that has nothing to do with the kind he’s used to. He’s not afraid of having his cover broken, no one is hunting him, he even knows his neighbors well enough to feel relatively safe within a few blocks of his ground floor apartment. There’s the young Togruta family two buildings down from him, for example, who’ve sometimes shared meals with him since he installed an alarm system on their windows. The cranky old Eslarian landlady he rents from is decent, too. 

No, this panic is entirely helplessness. He can’t run, he can barely fight, he’s got nothing but the blaster under his coat, and…

Well, and Kay. Who can carry him and fight and run, probably all at the same time, but he doesn’t want to have to rely on that.

If he’s very, very lucky, they’ll find a mechanic with the parts he needs, and get his chair fixed by tonight. But Cassian is very rarely lucky, he’s just stubborn and sometimes clever.

And if he can’t get the chair fixed? He can’t out-clever or out-stubborn a fractured spine and nerve damage and...

Well, there’s the panic. A sickly tide he can’t let cloud his thoughts. He can’t think about helpless he’ll be without it, how immobile. He can’t think about how much he’ll hurt.

Not that pain has ever stopped him before. 

The first mechanic has a dismantled speeder in front of her shop and several droids inside, not all of them complete. She flicks her green lekku over her shoulder and cranes her neck to look up at Kay with wide eyes before tearing her attention down to Cassian.

“What can I do you for?” she asks.

“That is not grammatically correct,” Kay points out, and her eyebrows shoot up.

“I’m not here about him,” Cassian says, but it turns out she can’t do much for the chair. She doesn’t have parts that are both small enough and powerful enough for what he needs.

Neither does the next mechanic. Or the third. By the time they leave his shop, there’s machine grease on Cassian’s palms from shaking hands with him, and he still doesn’t have the parts. The chair is beginning to make a high-pitched whining sound, and Cassian tells himself the smoke he’s smelling is from the cart selling fried noodles where he stops to buy lunch, even though the smell lingers after they’ve left.

“There must be better mechanics,” Kay points out, “in wealthier neighborhoods.”

“There isn’t a lot of wealth around here,” Cassian says, “except in the casinos…” He trails off, and Kay pauses to look at him.

“That’s your thinking face.”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to tell me what you’re thinking?”

“I have a… friend who might at least know where to ask. Do you remember where you found me?”

Kay huffs. “Of course.”

~~

By day, Aal Madha looks only slightly less rakish than she does by night. Having never seen her anywhere but in the smoky darkness of the casino, this is the first opportunity Cassian has to notice the scars on her arms. She doesn’t even try to hide the marks an Imperial interrogation droid left on her skin. He suppresses a shudder; there seems to be nowhere in the Galaxy he can get away from reminders or his past.

Aal leans over the table in her parlor, where her battered protocol droid leaves them to face her. Heavy curtains drawn back from the windows let in Eslar III’s pale sunlight. The curtains and the upholstery on the chairs are the same rich red as the dye in her hair. Her dress gapes when she rests her elbows on the table, showing a view she probably hopes will distract him.

“I don’t owe you any money, Rattah,” she says, before Cassian can so much as open his mouth. “No need to bring your big… friend in here to intimidate me. Oh, I’m sorry, your… assistant? Support droid?” Her voice is mocking and warmly inviting at the same time. She’s good at this, at playing people, making them feel like they’re part of some special inner circle, satellites orbiting her gravity. It’s part of her job, as much as being invisible used to be part of his.

Now it’s just part of his life.

“Do I intimidate you?” Kay asks. Aal looks past Cassian at him and smiles, lifting just one corner of her painted mouth.

“No.”

“Oh,” Kay says, rocking back in the way that tells Cassian he’s feeling a bit put out. Which might, maybe, keep him quiet for a bit.

“I didn’t come here for money,” Cassian says. 

“No?” She cocks her head, red hair tumbling down onto the tabletop. It must be heavy, all that hair. 

“No, just for a bit of information.”

“Nothing’s free around here, Rattah, you should know that by now. But if money’s not the issue, I can think of other ways you could pay me for my information.” Her tone is unmistakable, and a little thread of heat crawls into his belly. It’s not entirely pleasant, although it isn’t entirely unpleasant, either.

“And how’s that?”

“With a little information in return,” Aal says, and now she smiles with both corners of her lips.

“Afraid I have more money than I have anything interesting to you,” Cassian says, thinking about those scars on her arms again, though he doesn’t allow his attention to betray him by looking at them. “I just need to know where I could get parts for this,” he pats the arm of his chair as if he’s fond of it, which he’s not. He just uses it.

“Ah, yes, I heard about your unfortunate incident,” Aal says smoothly. “So, you’ll understand that I need to know if you’re an Imp.”

“He is not–” Kay begins in outraged tones, and Cassian calmly overrides him.

“Let’s not insult each other, Aal. If I am an Imp, I won’t admit it, so when I say no, you won’t have any reason to trust me.” He leans forward, elbows propped up. “If I were, out of curiosity, would you be happy with leaving me immobilized?”

“Overjoyed,” Aal says, without a trace of hesitation or humor. It’s enough to make him like her, much more than her other displays for his benefit. “But I’m much more interested in your droid.”

“He’s not mine,” Cassian says quickly. “I mean, he doesn’t belong to me.”

“He just follows you around?” Aal asks, arching an eyebrow at him. Then she gets up, and Cassian has to twist in his chair to keep an eye on her as she goes around him to circle Kay. 

“You don’t act like the others,” she muses, trailing one hand lightly across Kay’s chassis. “Or even stand like them. You were going to say he’s not Imperial. Your slick friend there is very careful with his words, but not you. So,” she drums her fingers on his plating once and finishes her circle back to the table.

Cassian isn’t sure how it’s possible for a droid to look incredibly uncomfortable, but Kay manages it, standing very still through the entire procedure, his unblinking optics fixed on Cassian. He has to fight the unreasonable urge to grab her hand away, and the relief when she leaves Kay alone surprises him a little. Aal isn’t exactly a threat, so why did that make him so protective? 

“So,” Aal goes on. “I’ll help you. But, I’m sorry to say, it will take some time to get the parts you need.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some good old hurt/comfort
> 
> cw: panic attack

It’s hard to care for someone in pain. Kay watches Cassian struggle every day to walk, and gets 100% confirmation that he really is needed here, as crossing the single room they live in has become an ordeal. Slow, careful, methodical. Cassian used to be so easy in his body, fast, sometimes even about as graceful as an organic without specialized training could be. Most of the time, he was as strong as he needed to be, and when he wasn’t, Kay was there to do the literal heavy lifting.

Now, though…

Now, he treats his body like a weapon that might turn on him at any moment.

But the hardest part is watching him fall. 

“Would you like to know the probability that you will sustain serious injury if you continue to push yourself like this?” Kay offers a hand and lifts Cassian back to his feet. Seeing him on the floor floods Kay’s circuits with a cascade of alarm, even though he caught himself and didn’t fall very hard. Just a sort of graceless folding collapse, starting, he’d noticed, with the leg where he’d been shot on Scarif.

“No,” Cassian says, and then, before Kay can answer him anyway, “let me guess. It’s high.”

“Well, yes,” Kay says, slightly put out at having his predictive abilities, well, predicted.

“What am I supposed to do?” Cassian demands, brushing himself off, his voice bitter and tight with frustration. “Lie around and do nothing until some greasy mechanic fixes my chair so I can glide around again?”

The injuries from Scarif, he’d explained to Kay, had been exacerbated by later wounds - which Kay had already known, thank you very much, from watching him push himself too hard even before the head trauma from the explosion that wrecked Kay’s original chassis.

“You always were an awful patient,” Kay says simply. Cassian just shrugs and brushes himself off. It’s true that Kay doesn’t really have a better suggestion. Cassian hates being bedridden more than he hates almost anything else, and it’s not like he has spywork and holonet covers to keep him occupied or mission reports to read. He doesn’t even own a datapad on this hunk of rock floating in space. 

And inactivity, Kay knows all too well, is easily as dangerous to Cassian’s mental health as activity now is for his body. Inactivity will allow him to think, and then wallow, and then, inevitably, spiral. 

Even though he’s improved significantly in the days since Kay arrived on Eslar III, Kay knows from experience that his presence alone is not enough to outweigh everything Cassian carries on his fragile organic heart. 

“I could carry you on my shoulders,” Kay offers, brightening. “You could go out, and no one would be able to bother you then.” 

Cassian looks up at him with his skeptical face on, appears to realize Kay is serious, and then gives a short, slightly breathless little bark of laughter.

“What a sight that would be. That’s definitely going to convince them I’m not an Imp.”

“Aal believed you,” Kay protests. He hadn’t liked the red-haired human very much at first, but at least she’d been sensible by the end. 

“Aal believed _you,_ ” Cassian says, and there’s something in his voice Kay can’t interpret. He can’t read his face, either, because Cassian turns and limps over to the pantry, taking down dehydrated noodles and a few other little packages. Kay can’t very well tell him to stop and turn around, since he definitely wants Cassian to make himself food.

So he has to guess. “You don’t like that she believed me?” he asks. “Or, you don’t like that she was flirting with you.”

Cassian’s shoulders go stiff. “She wasn’t flirting with me.”

“Well, she wasn’t showing off her mammaries for my sake,” Kay says, earning another laugh. Aal Madha is hardly the first person to flirt with Cassian, though he did notice that Cassian failed to flirt back. Kay has his guesses as to why, but he doesn’t really pretend to understand how organics think about sexual interactions. Everything he knows comes from observing Cassian, but neither Cassian nor the situations they’ve been in have been exactly normal, and he doesn’t have a control group to compare him to. 

He tried with Jyn and Bodhi, but they were never in normal situations with him, either. 

“In any case,” Cassian says, in the way humans tended to change the subject whenever Kay got on similar topics - except for Jyn, who sometimes seemed to enjoy telling him details he did not understand at all - “you’re not carrying me on your shoulders. Though I appreciate the offer.”

Allowing himself to be diverted, Kay considers. “You did physical therapy after spinal surgery on your return from Scarif,” Kay says. “It helped. Have you had physical therapy again?”

Cassian’s posture - too nonchalant, for if anyone is familiar with how Cassian gets ready to lie or when there’s something he doesn’t want to admit, it’s Kay - answers for him.

“We are doing physical therapy,” Kay says decisively. “I will help. I am going out now, when you are finished your lunch, we will start.”

Cassian spins away from the stove and has to grip hold of the counter until his knuckles go white. Kay is close enough to pick up the acceleration of his pulse. “No! No. You can’t go out alone. Someone might shoot you.”

His worry is endearing. “No one is going to shoot me.”

“I can’t come after you,” his human says, not sounding comforted in the slightest. His volume has also ticked up. “I can’t help you if someone tries to hurt you.”

“No one is going to hurt me, Cassian,” Kay says, in his most soothing tone, but Cassian is trembling now, breathing in quick, shallow gasps. “I am going to the information kiosk to research human physical therapy techniques. I will be back in half an hour–”

“No!” Cassian’s voice rises until it breaks, his eyes wide and black with panic. “Don’t. Don’t go. I’ll come with you. I can make it that far, I can–” 

This is worse than Kay realized. 

Physical contact is a tricky thing when Cassian gets like this, because sometimes it helps, but there are times when he can’t handle being touched at all. Kay takes the seconds while Cassian winds himself up talking to calculate the odds in this case, and then steps forward, filling the space in front of Cassian, with his little fragile organic body between him and the counter he clings to. 

With the gentleness of carefully calculated pressure, he closes one hand around Cassian’s bicep, the flow of words breaking off as he pulls Cassian against him. 

“All right, Cassian,” he says, in the same very gentle tone. Repeating his name so Cassian will know where he is, _who_ he is, because on rare occasions, Cassian reverts to previous temporary programming and thinks he has to be someone else. “As it appears to cause you distress, I will not go out alone.”

For once, he restrains himself from pointing out that Cassian is in no condition to protect him even if he was there, that between them, Kay is much more likely to be able to defend himself than the other way around. It takes effort not to point out something so obvious, but for Cassian, he does it, because the sensors in his palms and fingers pick up the tremors running through the body in his arms.

Cassian slumps against him. “You won’t go,” he whispers, and he sounds so small. So lost. “I’ll do whatever you want, we can do therapy, I’ll get stronger, I promise.” He’s entered the bargaining stage, which should be a good sign, because now it means Kay has something to reassure him with.

But the desperation in his voice winds Kay’s circuits tight with distress, processors heating up as he runs strings of concerning code and renewed calculations of Cassian’s health. He’s usually much better at dealing calmly with these episodes, because one of them has to be calm, and he can’t devote much attention to why this time is different. So he just gets one result.

It’s different because this isn’t about a mission.

This is personal.

Slowly, carefully, Kay tries something he’s never done before. Something he’s seen other humans do. They seem to like it.

He runs his fingers tenderly through Cassian’s hair, feeling the unusual texture of the warm strands, careful when one joint gets caught in a tangle.

“Don’t leave me.” Cassian shivers, but doesn’t try to pull away. “Please, Kay, don’t leave me again.”

“I am not going to leave you, Cassian.”


	8. Chapter 8

Cassian doesn’t always enjoy Kay’s honesty. His inability to lie is often inconvenient. It very nearly got them in deep trouble on Jedha, and that wasn’t the first time. His propensity for spouting depressing probabilities and complete lack of filter certainly isn’t always Cassian’s favorite feature of his mechanical friend. There are even times his bluntness hurts.

No, he doesn’t always enjoy certain aspects of Kay’s personality, any more than he enjoys anyone else, but he has come to rely on them. That maddening honesty is the one rock Cassian can cling to in a life of half-truths and outright lies and never really knowing who he can trust or who will trust him.

There is only one person in the Galaxy he can trust without exception, who will tell him exactly what he thinks even if Cassian doesn’t really want to hear it, and who will never, ever lie to him.

So when Kay tells him he’s not going to leave, Cassian believes him. 

That trust, that belief, is worth more to him than every credit in existence, and he doesn’t want to go back to a life without it. He can’t go back to a reality where Kay isn’t there in all his sarcastic, annoying, honest _rightness_. Everything other people don’t like about Kay is what Cassian relies on him for.

He’s also, apparently, good at hugs. Which seems, even to Cassian’s adrenaline-fogged brain, like a weird skill for a security droid to have. Where did he learn it? The thought of Kay downloading some sort of hug programming makes him laugh. It’s not a very good laugh, a shaky sort of giggle. Kay’s plating is faintly warm, motors and processors humming beneath his metal skin. There’s even a soft, repeating click, like a faint slow heartbeat.

And then there’s the hand in his hair, an intimate tenderness that brings tears to his eyes.

“Are you laughing, or crying?” Kay asks. His voice doesn’t reverberate in his chest like an organic’s with lungs. It sounds just the same as always, coming from above him, perfectly familiar.

“Both.”

“I fail to see what is funny. You were very upset.” There’s the unmistakable buzz of worry in Kay’s vocoder. “Do I need to take you to a doctor?” 

Cassian shakes his head, as best he can with Kay’s hand still caught in his hair.

“Just keep doing… what you’re doing.”

“Is it helping?” Kay brightens audibly.

“Yes,” Cassian says. His heart is still going very fast, but it’s no longer out of fear. He doesn’t know what it is, except that he’s tired and hurting, and has apparently reached the limits of his emotional endurance. And it just feels really, really good to be held. It feels… safe. “It’s helping.”

“Then I will continue to do it.”

~~

Physical therapy is certainly simplified by a very tall, very strong droid with fast reflexes. For one, Cassian doesn’t have to worry about falling during the sessions that fill many of the hours he used to spend gambling. While not as mentally stimulating, the exercises Kay found are physically exhausting, and despite himself, he starts sleeping better. At least, when he doesn’t hurt too much to get comfortable.

But progress is slow. The exercises make him face how weak he’s gotten after months relying on the chair that’s currently sitting uselessly in a corner waiting for Aal to contact him. Things that used to be so easy he didn’t even think about them are now difficult or impossible. He dislikes having to rely so heavily on Kay, putting that burden on him, but his options in that regard are rather limited. His lack of self-sufficiency bothers him, but he does his best not to take it out on the only person around who cares about him.

Being largely confined to the house also means they don’t get a break from each other, which isn’t that unusual for them under even worse circumstances than this. They’ve learned long ago how to give each other space when they need it. 

After a particularly arduous session - Kay pushed him to test his limits, which is good, but left him hurting in every bone - Cassian retreats to the ‘fresher. In part, it’s because he doesn’t want Kay to see him in pain and think he has to take even more care of him when there’s so little Cassian can do to give back to him. 

He rakes his fingers through his hair under the tepid water, and the sense-memory of Kay’s hand hits him hard. The fragility of his own mental state worries him. He’s always had missions to keep him busy, that gave his life purpose. Losing that, and thinking he’d lost Kay, took away what stability he had. Apparently, it worries Kay, too, because the droid has never held him like that, never soothed him like that. 

And if Cassian indulges in a moment of brutal honesty with himself, he liked it. Experimentally, he does it again, not to get soap out this time. Just to see how it feels. And imagine its Kay’s fingers tugging gently and not his own. He wants, needs, to know if he liked it because he’d needed in that moment to be touched, or if it’s something…

Else?

He’s pulled from his thoughts by the soft ring of the alarm he’d installed on the wall across from him. Someone’s at the door. He shuts off the water, checks visually to make sure his blaster is on the shelf where he can reach it easily. He can’t dress quickly, and while he’s getting his trousers on, Kay’s voice says something outside.

Cassian’s heart seizes up. What is he thinking, answering the door?

Limping to the ‘fresher door, he grabs the blaster in one hand and presses the hatch button with the other.

“As I was saying…” Kay has his back to Cassian, blocking his view of whoever is at the door, “mister, uh, Rattah, is washing now, so you can’t come in.” He turns slightly. “Ca--”

“Thanks, Kay,” he says, quickly cutting him off. It’s just the Togruta neighbor at the door, holding her kid by one hand and a container in the other. “I’ve got it.”

“She is bringing you food,” Kay says. “You should be thanking her.” He stalks over and offers his hand. “I’ll take that.” It’s a surprisingly innocent attempt, from Kay.

Cassian hands him the blaster. At least he’s not going to try out using it inside the apartment. 

“Mister Rattah.” Nimali’s smile is warm and a little shy. She’s short for her species, shorter than Cassian. “We haven’t seen you much. Shatho said someone attacked you.” At his gesture, she comes in and sets the container on the counter. She must have noticed the blaster, but he was armed the first time she came to ask him about her security system, too, so she doesn’t comment on it. 

She doesn’t seem afraid of Kay, either, which is… a nice change, actually.

“Thank you. You really are a good cook.” He settles onto the chair, which is now, as Kay predicted, purely stationary. “I see you met K-2S0.”

“You’re so polite. I see you trying not to ask why I’m not afraid.” She glances towards Kay. “None of us think you’re a threat. It’s nonsense. What Imp would live like this? No offense intended.”

“None taken.” He gives her one of his careful smiles in return, the one designed to exhibit a little humor and a little humility. Meanwhile, Kay pulls the lid off the container to examine its contents, gracing them with a savory, salty smell that makes Cassian’s mouth water. “But you said ‘us?’”

“Well, no one who knows you,” she amends, picking at her claws. The kid, momentarily unattended, makes a beeline for the blaster where Kay put it. Without him even appearing to look, Kay’s hand shoots out and snatches it away, holding it up high.

“You cannot have this,” Kay says firmly. “You will get hurt.”

Nimali glances their way, and is apparently satisfied her kid is safe, because she doesn’t intervene. Her trust makes Cassian oddly warm, even proud of Kay. Pleased that her claim not to be afraid is backed up by her actions. 

She leans forward, resting her hands on the table to look intently at him. 

“The ones who do not know you… you need to be careful, Rattah.” She lowers her voice, though if she thinks Kay won’t be able to hear, she’s wrong. “You and your droid are attracting attention. I would not like anything bad to happen to either of you.”


	9. Chapter 9

That evening, after making sure Cassian ate most of the meal Nimali had brought him - he didn’t have to make sure he saved the rest, Cassian doesn’t waste food - Kay did not power down even after he connected to the charging port. Technically, he doesn’t need to charge very often, but as Cassian had pointed out, the infrastructure in this part of the city isn’t very good, so he prefers to draw from it a little bit frequently, instead of a lot occasionally. 

Even during what should be a restful time, Kay can’t quiet the hum of processors examining the new data and all its implications. Watching Cassian roll over for the fifth time in an hour, he wonders if this is anything like what organics experience. What keeps his human from sleeping even when he’s exhausted. 

Kay doesn’t usually have a problem asking things like that, but he doesn’t usually have a problem powering down, either.

Finally, Cassian sighs and sits up.

“Are you thirsty?” Kay asks helpfully. 

“I can get it.”

“It will be easier for me,” Kay points out.

“I can get it, Kay.” Cassian’s voice goes hard and brittle, and then softens as he adds, “Thank you.”

So Kay just watches him limp across the room, trying to distract himself with calculating signs of improvement in strength and posture in how Cassian walks. His shoulders are hunched, but he often slouched before, too, and he doesn’t lean as heavily on the counter while he fills his cup. That’s good. At least, Kay hopes it’s good. He dislikes hoping for things, because hope reveals a fundamental lack of concrete knowledge. He wouldn’t have to hope if he _knew_.

What Kay does know disturbs him. Every time he goes over the data, he gets the same conclusion.

Cassian was anonymous on Eslar III, just one more crippled refugee or ex-criminal or any number of reasons people came to the Outer Rim. Some to disappear, many because it was the only place they could afford. It’s not exactly safe out here, but Cassian can handle himself, or maybe didn’t care about the danger. Maybe he’d even wanted somewhere dangerous, so if something happened, it wouldn’t be his fault.

What matters is that Cassian had been unnoticeable. Safely invisible. 

Until Kay appeared.

Effectively, Kay had blown his cover. Kay is conspicuous, he attracts attention and ire, reminds people of the thing many hate and fear the most. By associating with him, Kay has brought that attention on Cassian.

Now he’s been attacked, his already limited mobility compromised, and his friends are warning him to be careful.

Kay certainly isn’t sorry he came here, not remotely. There is no one more important to him than Cassian, no one he’d rather be stuck with anywhere in the Galaxy. But he has to face the fact that, by fixing the problem of his absence, he has created a new problem with his presence. So. He has to fix that problem, too.

Unfortunately, he can’t do it from this room.

“Cassian,” he ventures, as Cassian finishes his drink. 

“Hmm?”

“It is very late. If I went for a walk alone, would you be very upset again?”

The darkness in the room is no obstacle for Kay’s vision, he can see Cassian as perfectly as if it was day simply by adjusting his optics. Cassian takes a deep breath, holds it for a count of five seconds, and rests his hip casually against the counter. His throat works as he swallows, hard. 

“Take a comm,” he says at last.

“Are you very sure? Don’t be self-sacrificial.” Kay very much wants this to be a good sign, that Cassian is in better control of his emotions now, but he could just be pretending.

“It’s not fair of me to keep you confined in here. Just be careful.”

“May I also take the blaster?” Kay asks hopefully. “For protection.”

“Definitely not.”

~~

Aal Madha’s protocol droid isn’t happy to see him, and if Kay used a bit of intimidation to get what he wanted, well, Cassian never has to know about it.

Aal herself appears after Kay has waited 10.5 minutes in the same room where she flirted with Cassian. She’s wearing a heavy green robe against the cold night air, and holds it close around herself as she looks Kay over.

“Well, this is unexpected.” She sits on the edge of the table, looking up at him. “You do realize it’s the middle of the night? Never mind, it doesn’t matter. Did Rattah send you?”

“No.” He’s glad she doesn’t expect any organic cultural pleasantries from him. He’s not a protocol droid, after all, manners aren’t really his thing.

“Interesting. You act completely independently, though I’m assuming on his behalf?”

“He removed my obedience programming.” He’s still not sure she’s entirely trustworthy, so the programming he does have informs him of every possible weapon within range of his sensory processors, as well as the most vulnerable points on a human body and the quickest ways to incapacitate her if he needs to. It would be very quick. This way, he can reassure Cassian he was very safe and careful if he asks. “I have no obligation to obey him. Or anyone else.”

Aal lifts her chin, and a crease appears between her brows. “So you… you’re here because you… care about him.”

She doesn’t say it like it’s a question, or even like she’s surprised by the idea of a droid caring about a human without programming to tell him to. Maybe she’s not so bad, after all.

“Yes.” 

“All right.” She hops down from the table. “So tell me what’s so important you got me out of bed on my night off for it.”

“I’ve put him in danger. I think it would be best for him to leave Eslar III and go somewhere more people care about him.” Kay lays his cards, metaphorically, on the table. It’s Jyn who taught him about metaphors, and he enjoys being reminded of her when he thinks of them. “I do not think I will be able to convince him to do this alone. I need to contact someone. You were the only person I could think of who might have the technology for long range communications.”

“That’s quite the assumption,” Aal says. “But what makes you think I’m just going to help you for free? I’m already looking into a mechanic for his chair.”

“I am a droid. I do not have credits to repay you.” 

“But you have skills.” She gives him a sweeping look up and down, and he gets the impression she knows what he’s capable of.

“I will not hurt people for you. And I don’t think your patrons would appreciate me being your bouncer.”

“True. What else do you have?”

“My primary programming is in strategic analysis.” Security is a close second, but analysis is definitely his favorite thing to do. When it’s not keeping him from powering down for the night.

Aal claps her hands together. “If I showed you holo-footage of some people I think are cheating at my tables, would you be able to figure out who, and how?”

“There is a 95% chance I could, depending on certain variables.” It occurs to him too late that maybe he should have said he could definitely do it, but he can’t really be sure, and it’s too late to try lying now. Besides, his processors are already warming up with the idea of getting to figure out card patterns and tells. 

“Then we have a deal. Find my cheats, and I’ll let you use my comm.”

~~

It’s no longer strictly night when Kay walks back into the slum that makes up the city’s ragged edge. He hadn’t been able to reach Jyn, but he did leave her a recorded message in the code only Rogue One knows. She’ll work out his cypher quickly enough, she’s impressively good at cyphers for a human. 

Aal had been evasive when he’d tried to ask why she had a long range comm, which is especially interesting given that it’s the same tech the Rebellion used to use. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but it’s coincidence enough to add to his limited dataset on her.

He tromps through back alleys to avoid as many people as possible, taking a roundabout route home. At least he’d let Cassian know he’d be a while, so he’ll only worry a normal and unavoidable amount. Pausing at a corner, he glances around and then up, sure he heard something. A scraping on the roofs above him. It could be an animal, but it’s not. The shadow is too large and moves too purposefully. He wishes Cassian had given him the blaster, though he’s annoyingly right that an Imperial droid shooting someone would only make things worse for them.

And then something hits the back of Kay’s chassis with a hollow metal _thunk_. The second projectile shatters on the dome of his head and showers him with grit and splinters of stone. Grit sifts into the joints of his neck cradle as he breaks into a run. He can’t engage children with violence, even children with rocks. At his ground-devouring long stride, he’s quickly out of range, but not before more sandstone explodes against his plating and the more delicate instruments on his shoulders. 

Cassian is not going to be pleased.


	10. Chapter 10

Cassian is not pleased. 

“It’s just dirt,” Kay says calmly. “They were children with rocks, Cassian. Rocks are not going to damage me.”

It doesn’t make him feel better that Cassian himself was once a child throwing rocks at something he hated without truly understanding why.

“It could have been an adult with a blaster. Or an ion pulse. I knew it wasn’t safe for you to go out alone.” He clenches and unclenches his hands in an effort to remain calm himself, though it’s not fear coursing through him now. It’s rage that makes him hot inside, makes the pressure in his chest nearly unbearable as he does his best to take deep breaths. “Where did you go, anyway?”

Kay doesn’t answer the direct question, which is a bit odd. “It could have been, but it wasn’t. Can you look at my back? One of my comm antennae is bent twenty-six degrees forward.”

That successfully distracts Cassian. He knows it’s a distraction, but Kay is true to form in that it is also a real problem. 

“Sit on the floor. I’ll get my kit.” The tools he uses for working on his chair and the security systems he installs will do just fine for minor repairs, and he has some grease in there to deal with the dirt. Kay carefully lowers himself to the floor next to the bed, and Cassian sits on the mattress so he can easily lean over Kay to get to the comm package on his back. The paint is scuffed and dusty, too, but Kay’s right, there’s no serious damage. His posture makes the back brace dig in under his ribs, but he ignores it.

“I’m going to remove the antenna,” he warns him, “is that okay?”

Kay makes a humming noise of consent. It’s nice to take care of him for once, though of course he’d rather not need to. They’re quiet while he fixes and replaces the antenna, and quiet except when Cassian checks in with him while he digs bits of stone out of Kay’s charging port. 

“While you’re at it,” Kay says, speaking up at last, “could you look at my left hand and wrist?”

“What’s the matter with it?” Cassian checks over his tools, and has to hope it’s not a fine tuning repair. He doesn’t have what he’d need for any kind of serious electrical work on a system as complicated as Kay’s. What he’s got is about the mechanical equivalent of a first aid kit.

“This model was in the repair room when I found it,” Kay says. “I think some of the servos are old or not properly calibrated.”

Cassian winces. “You should have said something earlier. Let me take a look. I promise I’ll get proper repair equipment as soon as I can.” Now that they no longer have the resources and experts associated with the rebellion. 

“You had other things on your mind.”

Cassian pushes himself up, walks around Kay to the front, and puts both hands on his shoulders. Looking intently into the droid’s round optics, he says firmly, “K-2S0, I will _always_ be available when you need me. Do you understand me?”

Kay looks up at him, and for a second, Cassian thinks he’s going to say something sassy or cutting, but then he just bobs his head. “I understand, Cassian.”

They lapse back into quiet as Cassian kneels between the droid’s knees. His leg hurts a little, but his back isn’t too bad for the moment. At a nod from Kay, he opens up one of the small panels near the servo in Kay’s wrist. 

"I'm sorry I freaked out the other day," he says suddenly. Neither of them has mentioned his panic attack since it happened, but Cassian still feels awkward about it. It’s been weighing on him, and now he’s had confirmation both that he was right to worry and that it turned out okay. Plus, he's had bad turns before, but not usually because of something Kay said. 

"It's all right," Kay says. "I think I understand. Your reasonable concern about my safety was compounded by believing you had lost me once before. Your brain stops being able to tell the difference between now and then, and you panicked. Is that correct?"

"Something like that." Cassian tightens one of the small bolts. "How does that feel?" It's an odd phrasing, when he stops to think about it, because Kay can't actually feel his joints. Not in the way Cassian understands it, anyway. 

Kay flexes his fingers and nods. "It requires more grease. I would like an oil bath, but as there isn't one suited for me here, I will manage it manually."

"Here, let me?" Cassian offers. "It's easier from this angle, anyway."

He puts the nozzle in the can and sprays a tiny, controlled amount of oil into the open panel, listening to the soothing thrum of processors. So he notices when a fan kicks on like Kay’s thinking about something.

"Cassian," Kay says, in the _I'm about to ask you an odd question_ tone. 

"Hmm?" He doesn't look up, just wipes away a little rivulet of excess grease. 

"What does it feel like? When you panic."

Whatever he expected, it wasn't that. He sets down the oily cloth on the floor. Rubbing his aching knee thoughtfully leaves a dark grease stain on his trousers. 

"I guess I never really thought about... I don't really know how to explain. You're afraid of things, no? You feel loss and so you don't want to lose things that would hurt..." But he's using words, he realizes, that he doesn't know how to apply to circuits and code. 

"Why can't you explain?" Kay leans forward, staring intently at Cassian. 

His mind racing, he thinks while he talks, trying to make sense of the directions Kay's question has sent him in. "Because I... I'm realizing I don't know well enough how you experience things to contextualize them for you." 

"Do you think," Kay asks, "you understand how other people experience emotions? You and Jyn, for example, are very different."

"But Jyn and I are also fundamentally similar. We have the same chemicals in our brains, the same receptors for pain and pleasure..." He very nearly rubs his face, before remembering the grease. "Though I suppose some species don't have the same biological responses as humans. Maybe I'm no more or less similar to a Geonosian than I am to you."

"You still have not answered my question," Kay says, disrupting his rambling flow. 

"No, I just..." Had never really stopped to consider how Kay experiences the things he responds to. And suddenly it's important to know. 

He wants to know what it feels like to Kay when Kay holds him. All the times he's touched him, from friendly pats to repairs, those aren't the same as Kay stroking his hair while he cries. Is that just a gesture he made for Cassian's benefit?

Does it mean something to him beyond having a pragmatic purpose?

Does it feel good? It's suddenly important to him, now that he's thinking about it, that this kind of touching should be enjoyable for Kay, too. Especially if it might happen again, and he would like it to happen again, though he’s not sure yet what to make of that want. 

"Is it nice?" But he can't ask those things. He doesn't know how, or where those questions lead. "I mean, droids don't panic, you don't get..." This time, he forgets and rubs the bridge of his nose. His fingers are slick and smell like machine oil. Big surprise. "It's a little like being hijacked, or uploading a virus. I'm not in control, I know I'm not in control, and all my systems overload with negative input."

He's not sure if that makes sense, but Kay says quietly, "When I predict negative outcomes, sometimes it's difficult to stop running simulations, even when I am no longer being productive in trying to find solutions." He lifts one hand and curls his fingers loosely around Cassian's wrist, and though the metal is cool, a current of warmth runs through Cassian from the contact. 

"It happened a lot while I was looking for you," Kay says, and the warmth is followed by a wave of guilt that hits Cassian in the chest. Trust him to be the one to give a droid anxiety. "I kept running involuntary simulations in which you died before I could find you. They disrupted my normal functions the lower the probability of finding you became."

"Kay..." Cassian's voice comes out in only a hoarse whisper. "I'm so sorry."

"You did not know I existed to worry about you," Kay says simply. "What you did was stupid and selfish, but it wasn't aimed at me."

Cassian winces. Was it selfish? He hadn't thought so. He was protecting himself and saving everyone else from having to deal with him. But stupid? Maybe. 

"I'm still sorry."

"I accept your apology. Is that what panic feels like?" 

"Yes," he admits. "That doesn't really sound that different. Obviously, you don't have a circulatory system to speed up or breathing to disrupt, but your processors heat up and your fans run harder when you’re distressed."

Kay nods, then picks up one of the rags and reaches out, brushing Cassian's face with the cloth. "You have grease on your nose."

Cassian lets him. 

Wondering, a little breathlessly, if a droid can feel fear and anxiety, experience it in a way similar to an organic... Well, it’s not that he's ever doubted the reality of Kay's sentience. He's just never applied it to himself the way he is now. 

Because if a droid can experience those emotions, what else can he feel? 

If worrying about him had such a profound effect, what is it like for Kay to be close to him?


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Droid feelings, droid feelings everywhere

As unkind fairness would have it, the next time Cassian goes out, Kay can’t go with him.

“You won’t fit through their door, I’m afraid,” Cassian says, rather ruefully, as he puts his toolkit in the bag on his shoulder over the jacket with the blue patched elbow. If carrying the kit hurts him, he doesn’t make any voluntary indication, but Kay knows him well enough to see the strain around his eyes, the tension drawn at the corners of his mouth that doesn’t quite become a frown. He has an installation job, and it’s not all that far away, but in Cassian’s condition, it might as well be on Jakku.

“How do you intend to get there without me?” Kay said, shifting one step to the side to put his immovable bulk between the small human and the door. “At least let me walk you there. I can wait outside. It is not raining.” Not that rain would stop him, exactly, nor do him any harm, he simply dislikes being wet.

“You’ll scare them,” Cassian replies, with unusual bluntness. Another sign of strain. He hasn’t even left the room and he’s already showing the toll it’s going to take on him to do this job that will help keep a roof over their heads, food on Cassian’s plate, oil for Kay’s joints. 

“Their state of mind is not going to matter if you collapse in the street.” A discordant buzz of displeasure underscores his words.

“I’ll be fine.” Without elaborating, Cassian reaches back into the tiny cubby that serves as his closet, and takes down what looks like a half-meter long metal rod with a handle at one end. He tugs the other end, and the rod telescopes into--

“A cane?” Kay asks, voice pitching up as he momentarily loses volume control in his annoyance. “All this time, you have been in possession of a secondary assisted mobility device, and you haven’t been using it?”

Cassian shrugs, testing the cane on the floor to make sure it won’t collapse when he puts his weight on it. “I forgot.”

“You forgot, or you were too proud to use it?” Kay glowers at him, flicking through coded memories of all the times Cassian has stumbled, leaned on walls for support, even fallen, since losing use of his chair. All the bumps and bruises that could have been avoided. “Was admitting you needed a cane so much worse than getting hurt?”

“I said, I forgot.” Cassian’s voice goes brittle. “Leave it, Kay. Please.”

“I will not leave it.” Kay takes a step forward, without consciously giving the command to do so. “I _worried_ about you.”

“If you’re looking for an apology, you’re not going to get one.” Cassian leans harder onto the head of the cane, appears to decide it really is going to support him, and finally stows his blaster in the hidden holster under his jacket.

Oh. So he gets a blaster when he goes out.

Not that Kay would actually want him to go without it.

“I do not want an apology. I want you to have used the assistance you had available to you.”

Cassian glances up at him. His hair is overgrown, the fringe hanging veiling his eyes, though his facial hair is as neatly trimmed as ever. “I have you. I’ll be back within two hours, and yes, I will comm if I need you. I’m not too proud for that.” He limps past Kay, reaching up to pat his chassis as he goes by.

It’s a habitual, friendly gesture. Humans like physical contact, and Cassian more than most humans is desperately starved for it, so Kay allows it, allows the light vibration of hand on durasteel plating to shiver into his internal pressure sensors. He’s never told Cassian he actually likes it, has gone from appreciating merely the meaning of the gesture to enjoying the sensation itself. Or perhaps it’s some combination of the two, the vibration, and Cassian, since other similar light collisions have no such effect on him.

It is because he enjoys it that he notices this contact lingers 1.35 seconds longer than average, though not long enough for the warmth of Cassian’s hand to travel through the metal to follow the vibration to Kay’s internal sensors.

He rather would have liked it to.

~~

Droids don't dream. They're not even supposed to have imaginations. The simulations Kay runs are predictions based on facts and calculations, they are possibilities, but not fantasies. 

So when Kay finds himself simulating the impossible while he waits for Cassian to come back, he doesn't know how to react. He replays the idle simulation a second time, this time to measure his responses and observe his coding. Standing stock still in the empty apartment, Kay imagines — no, simulates...

How did it start? He had been recalling the minor repairs Cassian made to his left wrist. Simple, routine adjustments like tightening a bolt and oiling the delicate inner fine motor controls. It's nothing they haven't done a hundred times before, on and between missions. Cassian takes Kay's routine maintenance much more seriously than he takes his own, and frankly always has. 

Cassian is very backwards that way. Unlike most organics, he views himself as the tool, and Kay as the person. Cassian is the multi tool of the Rebellion, trying to be anything and everything they need him to be, but Kay's autonomy he has always fiercely maintained. Even if he is bossy fairly often. 

That was the beginning of the simulation. Then thoughts of how Kay, in return, tries to take care of aspects of Cassian's routine maintenance. Like making sure he sleeps. Like, now, helping him regain some amount of physical strength. 

And then he had simulated something that not only hadn't happened, but that had no reason to happen. He'd done something he wasn't supposed to be able to do. 

He had simulated — no, imagined — touching Cassian the way Cassian touched him. 

There's no panel in the human's wrist, but all his delicate workings are there. He’d felt them all in that brief moment he’d held it in his hand, the tug of tendon and ligament, the spark of nerves, the beat of blood. Kay knows human anatomy quite well, exactly how to restrain, harm, and kill, any number of organic species. He knows how hard to press to bruise, to break skin, to shatter bone. He knows how hard to press to cut off a vein and slow bleeding, how to clean a wound and dress it. 

What he doesn't know, is what Cassian would do if Kay traced the veins that thread through his wrists like wires. He doesn't know what Cassian would say if he stroked the sensitive pads of his palms and stimulated the nerve endings in his fingers. He doesn’t know what would happen if he did those things for no other reason than, what, curiosity?

And Kay hates not knowing things. 

The simulation flutters to a halt, with enough minute variations of possibility that he can't pick which to pursue. 

It doesn't matter. 

They are all impossible. Kay is a droid. Unlike humans, droids don't need touch, contact, intimacy. Droids don't dream, or imagine, or daydream. 

Yet, he picks the extremely small probability simulation where Cassian allows himself to be touched. He picks the one where Cassian smiles. 

And plays it again.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: brief trauma flashback

“I’m too tired, Kay.” It takes a lot for Cassian to admit he can’t do something, but he’s had three jobs in four days, only one of which Kay could accompany him for, and they still haven’t heard from Aal. He’s only sitting on the hoverchair now because he doesn’t want to show weakness by retreating to the bed. 

“It is inadvisable for you to miss sessions,” Kay replies, his tone clear enough to imply his concern. At least it’s not pity, Kay isn’t the type for that. “You have been improving.”

Is that what this is? Improvement? It’s true that working with Kay has made some progress reversing the muscle atrophy in his legs. He can walk, yes, which is better than he had before, but the cost is high. Even with the help of the cane, by the time he gets back from each job, he’s as exhausted as he used to be after weeks-long missions, and hurts like someone is twisting a vibroblade in his spine, pain that radiates down his legs and follows the curve of his ribs until the simple act of breathing torments him.

Not that he has a choice, Kay can’t earn them a living, not around here. No, Kay takes care of him physically, and Cassian takes care of everything else. It’s only fair.

When he doesn’t answer, Kay stalks across the room to loom over him, optics shining white, and it’s not really true that Kay is expressionless. Not to Cassian, who can read the droid’s posture and body language as well as Kay can read him. Which is what he’s no doubt doing right now.

Processors hum a little louder. “You are in physical distress. Your heart and respiratory rates are elevated.” Cassian neither confirms nor denies it. “I would like to assist,” Kay says. 

“You are assisting. I mean, you have assisted quite a lot.” He looks down at his hands, folded in his lap. He can’t ask for more. Not when he feels so useless, so kriffing helpless. 

There was a prison cell on Jedha, a wall of bars, a lock tricked so easily into opening. He has escaped from prisons, but he cannot escape the bars of his own broken bones. Well, he can, but he won’t do that now. He won’t do that to Kay. A wise man once told him he carries his prison everywhere with him, and either he was prophetic, or Chirrut had no idea how right he would one day be. 

Those are dangerous thoughts, and there’s nothing good to be found by following them. 

And then something thoroughly unprecedented happens. Kay places two durasteel fingers under his chin and applies a precise, careful amount of pressure into the soft place between the bones of his jaw, just enough to lift his head. Even more unprecedented is how Cassian feels that touch through his entire body, waking every single unasked-for thought he’s had since the day Kay stroked his hair. 

He swallows, hard enough to press metal fingers a tiny bit deeper against his skin, because Kay’s hands don’t yield like flesh does. His eyes dart away, looking anywhere but into Kay’s optics, automatically seeking escape. 

“Look at me,” Kay says, and without his conscious permission, Cassian’s gaze settles, looking up at Kay’s familiar black faceplate. “Your eyes are dilated,” Kay reports, continuing in exactly the same tone, completely unaware of the effect he’s having on Cassian’s delicate emotional equilibrium. 

Just because he’s never done something quite like this before, just because he hasn’t lowered his hand, doesn’t indicate that this _means_ anything. Cassian refuses to make any assumption of the kind.

Really, it’s kind of pathetic that he’s so desperate for affection that he’s mistaking Kay’s usual pragmatic tending of his needs for anything else. 

That’s what he keeps telling himself, anyway.

“Do you have medication to help with pain management that you have also conveniently forgotten?” Kay asks. He hasn’t quite gotten over Cassian’s disuse of the cane in his possession. 

Cassian shakes his head, just slightly, not enough to pull away from the contact that he really shouldn’t be savoring. 

“Cassian,” Kay says warning, so deep there’s a bit of a growl in his vocoder.

“I donated them to a local medical facility,” he says, and in a moment of blunt honesty, adds, “I didn’t want to depend on them.” 

“You are an extremely vexing organic.”

“I know.” Cassian even manages a tiny smile, just a twitch of his lips. He can’t quite help it, any more than he can help being vexing.

“You should stand and do the stretches we practiced,” Kay says. “I will make sure you do not fall. Small increments of movement may improve your condition, followed by a hot shower. Heat will relax your muscles and also diminish your pain.”

Rather than argue with him, Cassian allows himself to be lifted gently to his feet. Kay moves his hands from Cassian’s face to his waist, supporting him without ever using enough force to cause his fragile body further discomfort. 

It’s a little, strangely, like dancing. 

Dancing in slow motion with someone half a meter taller than him. 

He’s tired, and there’s a faint machine warmth coming off Kay’s chassis, and without really thinking about it, he leans against him. It’s surprisingly easy to simply surrender to that need, to the one person who has never failed him, never betrayed him. Not even when he has failed and betrayed himself. He breathes in the combined scent of durasteel and oil that is Kay’s the way sweat and regulation soap is his, and shuts his eyes against the memory of fire and terrible heat and Kay’s body shielding him on the ground. Kay crouched over him, and the dying shriek of his fans and motors, the hydraulic click of locks that keep him from crushing Cassian no matter what…

He doesn’t feel his knees give out, but he doesn’t fall, either. Kay sinks down with a comforting whir of servos, easing him to the ground.

“Cassian,” he says, very softly, full of worry and… something else. Tenderness? From Kay? Not likely.

“I’m all right,” he assures Kay, even as the droid maneuvers to the floor with the enviable control and precision of a machine. 

“Of course you are,” Kay says, with infinite dryness. He leans back against the wall, Cassian tipped forward onto his chassis. Cassian slides off his sternum ridge and finds himself pinned safely and surprisingly comfortably against the curve of Kay’s chest. 

Oddly, at rest, Kay’s processors hum faster instead of quieting.

“Your body temperature is exactly 36.65 degrees,” he says, “and you have used aftershave intended to smell like citrus, although the chemical compound is incorrect. Did you know the chemicals in your sweat change with your mood?”

“I… suppose that makes sense.” He shifts, trying to change the angle of his pelvis to something that hurts less, and then Kay’s hand slides under his hip, long fingers spread to cover as much surface area as possible, and he lifts ever so slightly. Just enough to shift Cassian’s spine into alignment and he lets out a tiny sigh of relief. 

“I enjoy gathering data on you,” Kay continues, as if nothing has happened. “After all these years, you have not become boring.”

“That’s good.” He shouldn’t be enjoying this so much, he knows it, even while he puts an arm around Kay’s middle. Ostensibly for support, but he’s actually perfectly secure.

“I would like to continue gathering data for a long time.”

“Is that your way of telling me you don’t want me to die?” Cassian tips his head back to look up at Kay, and finds Kay’s head and optics both canted downward, watching him intently.

“Yes. And that I would like to touch you more. Most of my information comes from remote observation…”

Whatever else Kay is saying gets lost in the static that took over Cassian’s brain when Kay asked to touch him more. If Kay was human -- or one of any number of other species -- Cassian would know what that kind of request meant. But Kay only ever means exactly what he says. Subtlety isn’t his strong point. And it’s yet another way Cassian’s body betrays him, by wanting to be touched, by wanting a droid. Not just any droid. Kay.

Then cool fingers curl gently around his wrist again, lift his hand from the scuffed metal of Kay’s new chassis, and Kay is asking, “May I?”

His pulse flutters, and he can only nod.

“You have to say it,” Kay says, cradling his hand. “Tell me if you want me to stop.” Cassian doesn’t really understand why, it’s not like anyone else ever asked. What he wants has never mattered, beyond wanting to fight for the Rebellion. 

But there’s no Rebellion now, just the two of them on the floor, so he says, “I don’t want you to stop.” It’s a shard of truth mined from the deepest parts of him, and he forces himself not to close his eyes against it. He makes himself watch as Kay gently turns his hand palm up, and a shiver courses through his whole body as Kay’s thumb traces the lines between calluses and scars that some people think tell a person’s fate.

Cassian knows his fate.

Or at least, he thought he did, but under that delicate caress of metal, it seems to shift into something he doesn’t recognize or understand.

“Your hands are cooler than your core body temperature,” Kay says. The last two fingers of his hand touch the thick vein in Cassian’s wrist. “Your pulse is elevated again. Is this all right?”

“Yes,” he says, though it’s not. Not when Kay has no idea the effect he’s having, and Cassian has no idea how to tell him. Guilt worms into his heart, biting the contentment that threatens to settle over him. He should pull away, but he doesn’t want to. It’s what he’s been doing his whole life, and he’s tired, so tired, and it feels good to be cared for in a way that definitely doesn’t have a practical purpose…

Kay can’t read his thoughts, that’s impossible, but he says softly, “Cassian.”

“Hmm?”

“It’s all right to rest.”

So he rests there in Kay’s embrace, and despite all the protests he knows he should have, there’s no other version of himself he’d rather be.


	13. Chapter 13

Kay makes extensive notes on what Cassian feels like when he’s mostly in one piece and relaxing and allowing himself to be touched. 

He allowed it! When not in an extreme of emotion. It was more than Kay had any reason to expect, and he’s both slightly put out at being wrong, and very pleased with the outcome. He had been correct about other things. Like the pleasantness of Cassian’s warm body in the cool room, and the way he relaxed slowly except for the tiny vibrations that went through him as Kay stroked his hand. The little hitches in his breath were particularly interesting, apparently erratic until he’d figured out which touch produced which response.

He would very much like to continue producing pleasant responses in Cassian, he would like to learn to make Cassian feel good, and not just safe.

There are two problems. First, he’s aware that what is to him a very simple desire, to please and mutually enjoy physical contact with the person he cares for, is not at all simple to many organics, and least of all to Cassian Andor. Cassian, for whom intimacy is a weapon he has both used and had used against him. 

Second, in the interceding four and a half days, Cassian has avoided physical contact with him even more than his customary reserve. Kay didn’t think he could be jealous of an unfeeling metal rod without even a single processor, and yet, here he is. Wishing Cassian would rely on the cane less and come back to him.

Or at least give some indication as to what’s going on in the faulty organic brain that’s so much less straightforward than hardware and code.

“Cassian…”

Cassian looks up from the holobook he’s flipping through, and Kay is still trying to figure out how to bring up such a sensitive topic when one of his internal comm channels activates. It’s the one he gave Aal Madha to reach him, since his are more securely encrypted than Cassian’s commlink. 

“Aal Madha would like to see us.”

~~~

“Good, you brought him,” Aal says, sizing up Kay. She has colored lenses in her eyes today, making them a feral bright yellow, and her hair is freshly dyed the color of iron-based organic blood. “I hope you got what you wanted.”

Cassian looks between them, eyebrows twitching slightly higher as he appears to realize she’s addressing Kay and not him. Kay can’t help but feel a little smug about it. 

“Do you have the parts? A mechanic?” Cassian asks, and Aal turns her attention to him. 

“I’m afraid not. Please come inside.”

Leaning heavily on his cane, Cassian limps after her, and Kay takes up his position at the back, close enough to steady Cassian if he wavers. 

“Right in here, boys,” Aal says, stopping at the door to her meeting room so they can pass her. Kay has to hunch down a little to get through the door, and then Cassian jerks to a halt in front of him with a tearing intake of air.

“Cassian!” Jyn leaps down from where she perched on the table, takes three and a half steps towards him before stopping. The lift of her hands and angle of her body tell Kay she wants to embrace him, but knows better than to do it uninvited. She looks the same as when Kay last saw her, hair gathered up in a bun at the nape of her neck, all of her radiating a kind of barely restrained intensity.

Then the second figure in the room gets up, tall and narrow, with sloped shoulders and dark eyes taking in everything. Bodhi Rook smiles his earnest, hesitant smile. “You’re walking again. That’s great.”

And Cassian steps back so fast he nearly falls right into Kay. 

“What are you doing here? How did you–”

“I brought them,” Kay says, circuits alight with satisfaction. “You should sit down before you fall over.” 

“No, I don’t need to– I’m going home. Get out of my way, Kay.” Cassian makes a very useless one-handed attempt to push Kay out of the doorway, and fails to so much as require him to adjust his balance. 

“I will not get out of your way,” Kay replies, some of his satisfaction beginning to corrupt into annoyance that Cassian is being so ungrateful at Kay’s efforts on his behalf. Typical of him, honestly.

“You can’t keep running away from us, Andor,” Jyn says.

“Will you stop using that name?” Cassian hisses at her, jerking his head very unsubtly at Aal, still standing in the hall behind Kay. 

“Only if you’ll come sit down,” Jyn says, pulling out a chair from Aal’s table. Their hostess clears her throat. Kay twists around to keep her in sight of his optics. 

“Oh, don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone,” she says. “You have decent friends, Rattah. We don’t all get so lucky. You lot talk, I’ll get drinks. On your tab, though, this isn’t a charity.”

Kay puts his hands gently on Cassian’s shoulders and nudges him towards the chair, only to find Jyn in their way. She’s short for a human, shorter than Cassian when he’s slouching, but she gets up in his face, eyes sparking with fury.

“How dare you,” she hisses.

“What? I didn’t kill anyone, this time. Or refuse to kill anyone. Or--” It’s a very tiny shift, the humans won’t see it, but Kay feels him lean just a fraction of his weight into Kay’s hands for support. Or maybe to get further away from Jyn. Kay squeezes just as tiny an amount to offer reassurance.

“We’re your _friends_ , Andor!” she snarls, her hands clenched into fists, and Kay calculates how quickly he’d have to move in order to block her if she actually tries to hit Cassian. She doesn’t hit him, but she definitely looks like she’d love give him a good shake. It’s a sentiment Kay can usually appreciate, but a little less these days. “The war ends and everything’s supposed to be at least safer, if not better, but then you’re just up and _gone_ without even a good-bye. I don’t know how how Kaytu found you, but–”

Kay draws himself up, ready to tell her exactly how he found him, when Cassian surges upright in his grip with sudden fury.

“You let him go alone! Some friends you are. You should know better, you should know how dangerous that was for him. Both of you.” He turns his head to look at Bodhi, not sparing the pilot the full strength of his sudden rage, and now Kay has the sense he’s actually holding Cassian back, instead of holding him up.

“I calculated the risks to myself very carefully,” he says, “and predicted my chances of survival were both better with you and better than yours without me.”

“He didn’t really give us a choice,” Bodhi says, spreading his long fingers in an empty shrug. “He’s as bad as you, going off without telling anyone.”

“I also calculated,” Kay adds, very self-satisfied, “that they were unlikely to let me leave if I informed them of my intentions.”

He realizes he’s made a mistake when Cassian twists out of his grip to glare at him, too. “And you could have gotten killed. Or worse. You should have told them. You should have brought at least someone with you for protection.”

“I didn’t want them.”

“That’s nice,” Jyn says with a snort, but Kay doesn’t think she’s actually offended. Nor does he particularly care.

“I wanted you, Cassian.”

Cassian folds his arms, the cane hanging from one clenched fist. He’s not swaying yet, but Kay makes runs a quick calculation of his likelihood of falling if he attempts to walk away. “Then why did you send for them now?” he demands, glaring up into Kay’s optics. He’s so small and so fierce, and Kay files this particular expression he’s wearing among the ones he doesn’t have a name for. Then he files his reaction to it into the new catalogue he started about a year ago, the one has been expanding rapidly since coming to Eslar III.

“He’s worried about you.” It’s Bodhi who answers for him, which Kay knows will probably only annoy Cassian more. Even if he’s right. “We all are, actually.”

“I am eighty-five percent confident that the three of us together can convince you to leave Eslar III,” Kay replies. 

Jyn adds, “And I’m one hundred percent certain we can all take you in a fight if we have to."


	14. Chapter 14

Bodhi, fidgeting with his cuffs, says, “Your name came up in the cue for bionic spinal implants. Draven put you on a wait-list...”

“I know.” Cassian sighs and drags his nails through his hair, looking anywhere but at Bodhi sitting on the floor facing him. “He told me before I left.”

It’s been ten hours since Kay sprang the arrival of the other third of Rogue One on him. The droid made him sleep for six of those hours, which he’d frankly needed. At least, he’s slightly less tired and slightly less in pain than he was before sleeping. Walking to and from Aal’s, even with Kay’s help, even with frequent stops, had really been pushing harder than he should have.

“Then why did you leave?” Bodhi asks. It’s a good thing he’s doing more of the talking, too, since he’s the one Cassian’s less likely to go off on. His bond with Jyn is stronger, but more volatile, too. Which is probably, come to think of it, why she’s standing there with her arms folded and watching him while Bodhi holds most of his attention. Except that Cassian has a great deal of practice dividing his attention between multiple threats.

“I didn’t want the surgery." Cassian forces his hands to relax, to appear at ease, resigned to the inevitable argument that he doesn’t want, either.

“I’d ask why,” Bodhi begins.

“But he’s not likely to tell,” Jyn finishes for him. 

“You’re right. It’s my business if I want a chair or a cane or a surgery.” Cassian folds his arms, too, intentionally echoing Jyn’s closed posture. His gaze slides off her and to Kay, standing by the kitchenette, and though the four of them make his single room very crowded, he’s glad to have the droid close by.

“Of course it is.” Jyn pushes off from the wall to stand in front of his chair, cutting off his view of everything but her. She looks down at him, and she’s not angry now, just staring into his eyes until the same serenity washes over him that he felt once in an elevator on Scarif. Holding her, sure they were going to die, but holding her nonetheless. 

He should have died. He was supposed to die. But he’s glad she didn’t.

“You don’t have to get surgery, or implants, or anything else," she leans in, “we just want you to know you have the option.”

“Bionic spinal implants would potentially improve your quality of life by up to eighty-seven point three percent,” Kay informs him over Jyn’s shoulder. “They would increase your range and duration of ambulation and decrease your pain more than any other currently available assisted mobility device.”

“If my body doesn’t reject them,” Cassian points out. As if he doesn’t know, as if he didn’t do the research himself. As he is, long-term use of the cane alone is unsustainable, he knows that. The chair comes with its own host of problems, like muscle atrophy and lessened accessibility. With the bionic, he could get by with the cane just fine, so long as he keeps it charged and in good shape. 

“There is only a seven percent chance of rejection on the most high-end models.” Then Kay's tone darkens. “I am assuming General Draven would not offer you anything less.”

“It’s more than I deserve.” Cassian looks away, unable to hold Jyn’s direct gaze any longer.

“That’s a terrible reason to live in pain.” Bodhi shakes his head, loose strands of dark hair swinging. “I can respect a lot of reasons not to go for such an extreme option, but that’s not one of them.”

Jyn nods. “You gave everything for the Rebellion. It’s about time you let them give you something back. Make up for a little of what you lost.” She crouches down in front of the stationary hoverchair and takes one of his hands. The sudden warmth and softness of human skin startles him after so long of just touching Kay.

And then he feels immediately, bizarrely guilty for liking it. 

Which is really unfair, for him to feel guilty about wanting Kay to touch him _and_ for enjoying it when Jyn does. Kriff, he’s a mess.

“At least come back with us. We’re a team, you don’t have to be alone anymore.”

“Excuse me,” Kay says, “he was not alone. He has me.”

Jyn lets go of his hand and gets up, dusting her hands over the fronts of her thighs. “Well, he can have all of us.” 

~~~

While Bodhi and Kay go shopping to clear out the apartment and also set up to feed two more humans for at least a few days, Jyn offers to give Cassian a backrub. It’s tempting. She has strong, tough hands, and a massage would probably make him feel a little better. But he shakes his head.

“Thanks, maybe another time.” He can’t tell her it would be too much, that he’s not ready for that much contact with anyone, though she’d probably understand. He can’t tell her he doesn’t want her to see, or feel, his scars, even though she was there when he got some of them, even though she visited him in medical after each of his operations. 

He certainly can’t tell her he’s afraid it would complicate his already extremely tangled feelings about intimacy, the sense-memory that haunts his unguarded moments before sleep of cool durasteel digits caressing his palm. It still amazes him how contact so small and simple can shift his perception of himself like abruptly finding the gravity of a star he hadn’t known was there.

Jyn just shrugs and leans against the counter, legs crossed in front of her at the ankle, eating one of his iljaa fruit ration bars. He drags his attention from Kay to her. She’s still got that hard, wary look about her. Always alert, like him, always ready to run or fight. 

And he realizes, another thing he didn’t know about himself, he missed her.

“I forget, sometimes,” he admits.

“Forget?”

“What it’s like having friends. That’s what you called us. Friends, a team. For so long, it was just me and Kay. And the whole Rebellion, of course, but that wasn’t…” He trails off, can’t quite find the word he’s looking for, but she nods anyway.

“I know. Trust me, I get it.” She pops the last of the ration bar in her mouth, chews as he goes back to his routine maintenance of the small blaster that is now his only weapon. He’s already sold the one he took from the man who attacked him. 

“Must be rough,” she says suddenly. “Surviving, I mean. Bodhi and I, we had other lives before this. Not exactly things to go back to, but you? That was all you had. You and him both. No wonder Kaytu went after you.”

He stares up at her, shocked. No one has put it into words before, not even himself. He hasn’t dared, can’t face the bleak reality that even now she’s only implying. That he has nothing left, that he has no idea what to do with his life now, no plans. He’s just scraping out one day at a time, giving away his money because if he’s going to be alive, he’s going to try to help people with less than he has. 

He hasn’t let himself admit that it is, in fact, hard. He has neither pity nor mercy for himself. 

But hearing Jyn say it for him, after everything she’s been through – the things he knows, and the things he might never know, just as there are things she doesn’t know about him – soothes something knotted and nasty inside him.

“It’s not what I expected,” he allows himself to confess. “I never thought about what came after, because I never really thought I’d be here to see it.”

“Is that why you left? Because you couldn’t face a life not at war?” She’s got that look in her eye, the challenge, and he knows she won’t leave off until she gets an answer that satisfies her. He used to fight her, even maked a barbed sort of game out of questioning each other.

But he’s too tired to fight now.

“It’s certainly a more reasonable answer than to suggest I’m afraid of surgery.” He’s deflecting and they both know it. 

“I never said that.”

“But you were thinking it.” He stares her down until she just shrugs, and, somehow, it’s her not asking that makes him say it. “And I was, just not for the reasons you think. I can’t get bionics.”

“Why not?” She arches an eyebrow, challenging him again, trying to stare him down right back, and it’s almost enough to make him smile. 

He’s still annoyed Kay went behind his back, but he is, grudgingly, glad to have Jyn and Bodhi around. They’re the closest thing he has to family, this band of misfits, and they have every right to be angry with him for disappearing.

“You’ve never had an issue with prosthetics,” she adds when he doesn’t answer. She’s good at filling silences. “You’re a Seppy and your best friend is a kriffing droid.”

“Was. I was.” He’s fidgety, restless talking about this. Now is when he would ordinarily pace, but instead the energy just coils up inside him, wound tight with no outlet. “And that’s why. I couldn’t… be like…” It sounds so foolish to say out loud. He folds his arms and lifts his chin. “The bionics remind me of Kay.”

“You and that droid.” Jyn shakes her head, sighing, and for a second his heart jumps into his throat, thinking she knows more than he’s said. More than he’s said even to himself. Then she says, “Oh. Oh, you didn’t want them… because he was gone.” Understanding dawns across her face, though it comes with no sympathy. “But Cassian,” she pushes off from the counter to come closer to him again, though not so close as before. “You don’t have to worry about that anymore. Kay’s here.”

He opens his mouth to say that he knows that, obviously, then shuts it again. She’s right. That argument doesn’t stand anymore, but he’d gotten so used to accepting it that he didn’t question it. Kay is here. There’s no reason not to be… more like him? Even if Kay would probably say that was silly and inaccurate.

“I… I’ll think about it.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone needs a friend.
> 
> cw: non-detailed mentions of sex.

Kay likes Bodhi Rook as much as he likes anyone who isn’t Cassian. They have things in common that he has with no one else he’s close to, like being – very technically, because Bodhi chose and Kay did not – Imperial defectors. Bodhi doesn’t sass him back like Jyn does, and he doesn’t lie like Cassian, but he’s earnest and honest and, like Kay, often literal. He’s also got more than his fair share of technical and mechanical knowledge, which makes him the only person other than Cassian that Kay allows to do maintenance on him if it can be helped.

“Cassian does not allow me to go shopping with him.” Kay has to shorten his stride for Bodhi, but not as much as he’s gotten used to lately. “He must want privacy with Jyn Erso.”

Bodhi gives him a slightly startled look. “It was Jyn’s idea. I think it’s more likely she wanted privacy with him.” He’s got his hands shoved in his pockets, which will make him twenty-eight percent slower in responding to a threat, but Bodhi doesn’t worry about those things the way Cassian does.

“It is nice to walk with someone who can keep up with me,” Kay adds, because he doesn’t want to entertain the simulations of interactions between Jyn and Cassian. “It is not Cassian’s fault, but he is slow now.”

“I suppose it can’t be easy to see him like this.” Bodhi hunches his shoulders, shoving his hands deeper into his pockets. “In pain, I mean.”

“I have never experienced pain. I do not have the sympathetic nerve responses organics have to each other’s sensory experiences.” It’s Cassian who taught him to deflect while still telling the truth, though Kay doesn’t do it often. It always makes him feel like he’s in danger of violating some central part of his programming, though whether it’s from what Cassian inadvertently did to him, or some remnant from _before_ , he doesn’t know.

Cassian would probably say it was just his personality. 

“Still.” Bodhi angles his body to avoid someone passing too close on his right. No one gets close on the left, because that’s where Kay is. 

“I have never experienced pleasure, either.” 

Bodhi comes to a halt. He glances around surreptitiously, but no one’s really paying attention to them.

“Do you want to?” He lowers his voice when he asks, though Kay isn’t clear whose privacy he’s currently attempting to protect.

“It is something organics appear to enjoy as much as they dislike pain. Except for Cassian.”

“He does seem like he runs into things that hurt him a lot.” A shudder runs through Bodhi’s body. Kay has few records on whatever things have hurt Bodhi Rook in the past.

“And he is even poorer at seeking pleasure than he is at other kinds of self care. Bodhi.” He makes sure he has the pilot’s full attention. “Have you previously engaged in forms of sexual stimulation?”

Bodhi chokes, even though he has nothing in his mouth and therefore can’t actually be suffocating. As he does not seem to be in danger, Kay waits it out while he coughs, going bright red to the roots of his hair. He pulls his hands out of his pockets to rub both over his face.

All together, it’s an amusing reaction to a straight-forward question, but it’s also a valuable reminder that organics are so much more sensitive to this particularly biological function, far more than any other. They aren’t even this embarrassed by their waste products, which Kay considers far more unpleasant.

“C-can we talk about this– somewhere else?” Bodhi finally manages to rasp, though he looks like maybe he wants to not talk about it at all.

~~~

They get a few slurs thrown at them in the market, and more than a few dirty looks. Kay knows it’s because of him, but he only minds in that it might put Bodhi in danger. The memory of the drunk man dragging Cassian out of his chair is still very fresh.

There’s an open block that barely passes for a park, with a dead tree and a bench covered in graffiti. Including, Kay notices, a smudged and poorly drawn Alliance Starbird in faded red. Bodhi drops down on the bench and idly kicks one of the many pieces of detritus that litter the brown grass. Kay sits down beside him to make it easier to converse, and also because he knows it makes organics more comfortable if he’s not looming over them.

“I can’t believe I’m going to have this conversation with a droid,” Bodhi says, pulling a small hex key from his belt and twisting it nervously in his hands. 

“I fail to understand why it should make you more or less uncomfortable that I am a droid.” Kay never fidgets like Bodhi or paces like Cassian. Neither activity has ever aided him in coping with any of the things that trouble him. His unruly simulations of Cassian’s doom and demise, for example, were impervious to any tactile forms of distraction.

Bodhi shrugs. “Let’s just get on with it. I’ll answer your question if you answer one of mine.”

“That seems fair.” 

“Okay. Good. What, uh, I mean, why do you want to know about sex… about that sort of thing all of a sudden. You pointed out yourself that you can’t feel pain or pleasure.” He starts out stuttering, but gains confidence as he talks.

“I would like to make Cassian feel good.” Now it’s his turn to pause, not for his own sake, but because he is aware Cassian would not want him to discuss this with anyone. He has, after all, calculated the likelihood of Bodhi using this information against him as extremely low. “You have not yet answered my question.”

Bodhi blushes again. He does so far more easily than anyone else Kay knows. “Well, yeah. I’ve had lots of… well, maybe not lots…”

“I fail to understand,” Kay grumbles, “why this is so difficult to talk about. It is not embarrassing if you have or have not.”

“No, it’s just… private.” Bodhi glances up at him under long lashes. “Hang on. Do you… you want to have sex with Captain Andor?” Kay makes a quick catalogue search of Bodhi’s microexpressions. Realization, surprise, disgust, and then confusion. “I didn’t know a droid could want that,” he says at last.

“Neither did I.” Kay’s sigh is fractured with static. “If the idea disgusts you, we need not discuss it further.”

“No, no, it’s fine.” The human is clearly trying to sound reassuring and neutral, and even doing a passable job of it. “Have you talked to him about it?”

“I have not. Yet. As your responses demonstrate, sex is difficult for organics to discuss.”

“I imagine it’s even more difficult with Andor.” Bodhi frowns sympathetically, kicking another piece of trash.

“Yes. And sex with droids is, also as demonstrated by your reaction, considered taboo.”

Bodhi nods, and they dip into a thoughtful silence for a moment before he says, “If you don’t mind my asking, why? You don’t have the, uh, biological drive we do.”

Kay doesn’t answer at first, not because he doesn’t have answers, but because he has too many. What he lacks in verbal filtering now acts as its own kind of filter, because he is incapable of giving all his responses at once. He wonders, a brief flicker of background processes, if this is similar to what some humans describe as being tongue-tied.

“I care about Cassian.” The words come out slow, hesitant, as he does his best to choose the right ones to convey what he can’t even fully grasp in plain code. “I do not appear to require biological drive to want to bring him both physical and emotional relief, which I know will improve both his physical and mental health. I am also curious and wish to gather intimate data on his responses to touch and pleasure, as I have had too many opportunities to observe how he responds to pain. Additionally, I have enjoyed previous periods of intimacy for reasons I can catalogue, but do not entirely understand. Is that answer sufficient?”

Bodhi nods again, bobbing his head in a way that is vaguely avian. “And you want sex advice.”

“I want to be prepared should the opportunity arise, and I am aware that holonet sources are not reliable. You are a human male of comparable age and physique, and therefore an acceptable source of information.”

“Thanks.” There’s a trace of laughter in Bodhi’s voice, which Kay takes as a good sign. He no longer appears shocked or disgusted. “Okay. I can try, so long as you take into account that I’m not him and no two people like exactly the same thing.”

“I understand. I only require basic knowledge, not intimate personal details.” He doesn’t really want them, anyway. Bodhi’s sexual experiences do not interest him outside of data gathering, for which he is privately relieved. It means this curiosity, these feelings – for he lacks a more droid-applicable word – are for Cassian alone.


	16. Chapter 16

Cassian has a lot of weird dreams. Most of them, for a long time, have been bad. The kind he prefers to use stims and caff and sheer blackout exhaustion to avoid. More recently, many of them feature Kay and quite a lot of fire. He remembers, or would remember if he ever bothered to try, a time when his dreams featured people doing pleasant things instead of violent ones. There was this fighter pilot once who showed up in an alarming number of his dreams for one brief period.

None of that prepares him for when, peacefully asleep and full of the dumplings he made for Jyn and Bodhi, he dreams about Kay. And there’s certainly no trace of fire, except the heat still lingering his blood when he wakes up, the edges of the dream already dissolved like mist in the unrelenting light of his hypervigilance. 

What he does remember is mortifying enough, that he was on the floor, with Kay, and not a scrap of clothing in sight. And that Kay wasn’t limiting his caresses to Cassian’s hands.

It’s getting harder to ignore the implications of what he has so far pretended are innocent impulses. He can’t pretend that all he wants is to be touched, though that is true. There are two other people in this very room he could have dreamed of touching him, platonically and otherwise.

There’s no light coming from the covered window, so he closes his eyes, attempts to return to sleep. Not that it’s likely to happen, but it’s what he should do. Then he remembers that the dream-Cassian had hands and body of metal and wires, and he groans quietly and pinches the bridge of his nose. 

Of course he dreamed he was a droid, a droid who wants to be held and touched. Because that makes so much sense.

About as much sense as a droid who wants to hold and touch him.

Thoroughly awake now, Cassian begins the unpleasant process of getting out of bed as quietly as he can without waking the other three people in the room. Bodhi and Jyn lie wrapped in blankets on the floor, and Kay stands quietly at the charging port, knees locked and optics dark in low-power mode. Once he’s up, he pulls on his jacket, the blaster tucked into a strap inside it, and reaches for his cane.

Stepping very carefully over Bodhi’s legs to the door, Cassian limps into the night and doesn’t stop until he reaches the quiet corner. There are no street lights in this neighborhood, and the corner is steeped so deep in darkness he doubts anyone could see him without walking right by. He’s light-headed with pain and lack of sleep, but neither feeling is unfamiliar to him. 

It doesn’t have to be this way anymore. Kay wants him to go back, to let himself be helped and taken care of – two things even Cassian admits he’s supremely bad at – and Kay also appears to want to hold him and stroke his hair and…

Cassian leans heavily against the wall behind him. It’s not fair to imagine what he would do if Kay wasn’t a droid, because he is, and Cassian wouldn’t change him even if that was possible. It’s not fair to imagine, yet he gives himself a brief foray into the thought experiment as a kind of comparison. Would it change his feelings? His behavior? Kay’s droid-ness aside, would he recognize this longing?

No, frankly, he wouldn’t, because he’s never felt this way about anyone, synthetic or organic. He has never felt _this_. There’s never been time or space in his life, in his thoughts, in his heart. But now there’s no Rebellion, no missions to survive, no objectives to complete. There’s only Kay, who searched for him and found him and…

And is incapable of wanting the logical conclusion this train of thought leads to, so really Cassian needs to get over himself and never, ever think about metal hands in his hair or the precise, tender strength of an Imperial security droid, or how safe he felt in that embrace. Even if the thought of never experiencing that kind of closeness and safety again makes him feel as bleak as the blasted remains of Jedha.

A metallic sound jerks Cassian back to attention, his hand diving into his jacket for the blaster pistol. 

"It's me." Kay's unmistakable voice releases at least some of the tension in his body, and he lets his hand drop. He hadn't even realized how cold he is, except for the reluctance of his fingers to close on the grip. "Bodhi said I should talk to you."

"Bodhi's awake?" He tries to recall if he accidentally bumped him on his way out. He's quite sure he hadn't. 

"No. Jyn woke up when I left, however, she will not follow us." 

Cassian sighs and shifts his weight further onto the leg that hurts less as Kay comes to stand close to him. The temptation to lean against him, to let Kay support some of his weight nearly overwhelms him, and he swiftly stuffs it down. 

"What does Bodhi think we need to talk about?" They had been out for longer than necessary to retrieve groceries, come to think of it. "If it's about the implants, Jyn got there first. I'm... considering it."

"I am glad she was able to make you sensible. It is more than I appear able to do." Kay's tone mocks him gently, and he suppresses a smile, knowing that Kay can see better in the dark than he can. 

"Cassian, why did Jyn say you wouldn't get the implants because of me? There is no logical connection I can make between those points."

"It's... not logical." Of course Jyn told him. He rakes his free hand through his hair. It's been frustrating, with the cane, getting used to only having one hand free. “Thinking about being part machine made me feel... It made me miss you."

Some process picks up inside Kay's plating. "Yes. That is... more like what Bodhi wants me to talk about."

Cassian glances up at him, but all he can tell in the dark is that Kay is looking at him, optics shining white, his plating only a little darker than the night around them. He’s a shadow, a phantom of metal and circuits and all the things Cassian wants but can’t have. He’s not used to wanting things for himself, doesn’t usually allow it, and it’s a good thing he’s so practiced at self-denial, because whatever Kay says next, he’s going to have to be very careful and very neutral about his response.

Kay’s left hand twitches towards him, then stops and falls back. It’s highly unusual for him to make any gesture he doesn’t complete, and his hesitancy begins to make Cassian nervous. 

“Go on.” Kay usually comes to him on the rare occasions he bothers to want to understand something about an organic, so the fact that he went to Bodhi… means it was probably about Cassian. Something he didn’t want to say outright. “I told you I’ll always be here for you, Kay. Jyn was right, we’re a team.”

“A team.” Kay sounds more disgruntled than Cassian anticipated by that definition of what they are. “No. I am a team with Jyn Erso and Bodhi Rook and sometimes the Guardians. I do not experience them the way I experience you. We used to be a team, but for some time now, I have wanted to be…” Kay makes that gesture again, some half-finished impulse that lifts his hand and drops it again. “Partners.”

Cassian’s heart gives a cruel twist. For some time? This isn’t what he expected, not at all. It was, in fact, what he was prepared to deny in himself. The desire to be closer, to be something other than what they’ve been before.

He deflects, keeping as neutral as he can. “Well, a team of two is usually called partners.”

“That is not what I mean.” Kay’s voice rises slightly. “I knew you would be difficult about this, I was going to put off telling you, but Bodhi said I have to talk to you.” It’s so unusual to hear him upset that Cassian didn’t recognize the modulation in his vocoder for what it is right away. Kay is distressed. Guilt and longing and something like fear coil up tight as copper wire in his stomach. “I don’t even know if I’m supposed to want this, Cassian. I did not know I could want… the things I have started to want. I am aware it makes me aberrant, but I know you and Bodhi and Jyn wouldn’t use it to hurt me. They are the only people I can talk to.”

“Is that the real reason you brought them here?” The effort of staying outwardly emotionless is pushing him into the cold shell he’s more likely to wear as an interrogator, coaxing information out of a mark, and using it against Kay twists him up tighter.

“No. I thought they could convince you to leave Eslar III. You are no longer safe here, and it is my fault that people think you are an Imperial fugitive.” The white gleam of Kay’s optics flickers above him. Cassian sinks his nails into his palm to divert some of his tension into pain. “If someone harms or kills you, it will be my fault as well. Therefore, I had to fix the problem, so I sent for your friends.”

He’d been reluctant to leave until this moment. Danger to himself is not a high concern for him. While he believed his continued existence had meaning only to him, it wasn’t worth much. But his instinct to become as small and invisible as possible, no matter how compelling, is not more important than Kay’s fear and guilt. He will always do for the droid what he would not do for himself.

The third time Kay makes that helpless little jerk of his hand, Cassian reaches out and catches it. The metal fingers burn soothing cold into the sore crescents from his nails, and he squeezes hard enough to feel every round knuckle joint and the edges of each segment. Kay’s hand is huge in his and has none of the give of flesh and bone, but the hunger he felt when Jyn touched him lights up inside him stronger than ever. 

“I’ll come back with you,” Cassian promises. “Since it means so much to you.”

A fan picks up inside Kay’s chest, and then he squeezes back, ever so carefully.

Then he lifts his other hand and slides three fingers lightly across Cassian’s cheekbone. He shivers when they brush across the sensitive shell of his ear and into his hair, until Kay’s palm splays across his cheek, his thumb coming to rest beneath his left eye. 

Cassian can’t breathe. 

Kay, who doesn’t have to, speaks first. “I can’t tell if you don’t want this, and you’re trying to spare my feelings, or if you do and you’re trying not to show it, but I know you are very intelligent by organic standards, and so you are not unaware of what I meant.” Neither of them move. For once, Cassian’s brain is stunned into shocked silence, the cold durasteel on his cheek and the twin white lights above him the only things real in the Galaxy. Nothing else exists. And then the quiet synthetic voice whose every modulation and emotion Cassian knows by heart.

“If you ask me to,” Kay says, with absolute and dreadful gravity, “I will delete all memory of this interaction and all the interactions and impulses that led to it.”

He scrambles for the memory of speech, and hears something approximating his own voice croak, “No.” The metal hand is the only thing keeping him from floating away. 

“Would you like me to stop touching you?”

“No.”

“Then what do you want?” Now it’s Kay asking the questions, coaxing answers out of him that he doesn’t know how to give. He’s not sure how their situations reversed, but here he is, helpless and hungry for more even while he flinches away from that hunger. He’s not allowed to want. Not for himself. He’s forgotten how. If he lets the _want_ out, he’s afraid it will consume him.

“Don’t ask me that.”

“I have to.” The grounding pressure of Kay’s hand lightens, and Cassian grabs his wrist before he can pull away. Kay is perfectly capable of breaking his grip, but he doesn’t. 

Cassian closes his eyes. Now there’s no voice, no shining optics, nothing but the durasteel slowly equalizing between the temperature of the air and the temperature of his skin. He’s cold, and with his eyes closed, he becomes aware of the faint warmth rising off Kay’s plating. Instinctively, he shifts closer to it. The _want_ leaks through the cracks in his resolve, through years, decades, of armor he built around his heart.

“I…” he grinds out, slowly, “I want…” to be made of metal that feels no pain, but still, impossibly, feels love. “I want to get a proper toolkit and finish the recalibrations on your new chassis.” There, that wasn’t so bad. “I want you to be where I know you’re safe.” The want doesn’t consume him, it just spills out in the only form that seems capable of encompassing most of it. “I want you.”

“To be partners?” He knows that tone, the trying-not-to-sound-hopeful tone. “Even though I am not organic, and most people would say there is something wrong with both of us for wanting this?”

Cassian shrugs. “There are lots of things wrong with me. If I have to be broken, at least there should be one way that makes me feel better instead of worse.”

“I make you feel better.”

Cassian lurches forward, nearly taking his own eye out on Kay’s thumb as he wraps both arms around the droid. His cane clatters on the ground. “Yes, Kay. Yes.”

Kay embraces him in return, gently, holding him up with both hands cradling his broken body and all the familiar sounds of his internal workings cradling his broken heart. 

They have a lot to work out, but this is a start.

This is home.


	17. Epilogue

The first thing Cassian does upon settling in the Galactic Core is spend a week keeping his promise to fix the faulty servos in Kay’s wrists. He replaces a few parts and generally makes sure Kay’s new chassis is in perfect working order, and since the KX model has been discontinued, he cashes in some contacts both legal and not to buy up a stockpile of specialized components. Bodhi helps with repairs when extra hands are needed, and stays with him when Jyn accompanies Cassian to the consultations Kay is excluded from. 

They don’t talk much while they work, but it’s pleasant to feel Cassian’s attention on him, the steadiness of his hands and the care in everything he does, from cleaning corrosion to tightening tiny bolts. It’s also intimate in a way repairs didn’t used to be, in ways Kay fails repeatedly to quantify. The same ways he can’t quantify why he likes stroking Cassian’s hair, or, when Cassian allows it, exploring other parts of him.

When Cassian finally goes in for surgery, Bodhi and Jyn both stay with Kay for the whole miserable fourteen hours, and put up with him obsessing over the probabilities of every possible outcome, good and bad. He vacillates wildly between smugness at how physically superior Cassian will be with bionic parts and needing to be reminded that incidents of full paralysis and death are, in fact, very low.

At first, the medical center refuses to let Kay into the building. Later, with an expression torn between concern and glee, Jyn tells him that Cassian got in a fight with the staff while still loopy on anaesthetic. He threatened to crawl out of the building. They threatened to have him restrained and sedated. Cassian threatened to call in several important Alliance members he probably doesn’t have jurisdiction to contact, but no one wanted to test it.

They let Kay in.

Cassian is sick and bedridden for weeks after the surgery. It’s not entirely unexpected, but for once knowing the probabilities doesn’t make it easier for Kay to see him that way. Bodhi was right about that, Kay doesn’t like when Cassian’s vital signs are outside of the healthy norm. Processes of alarm and the sort of sympathetic pain he had previously denied being able to feel start up when Cassian starts breathing too carefully, when he gets pale and sweaty and clutches the blanket but refuses to make a single damn sound or call for an assistant.

Kay learns to add a painkiller and a sedative to the drip that infiltrates the human’s fragile body with antibiotics and nutrients and everything he needs to heal and help the bionics integrate.

And while he’s stuck in bed, they have a great deal of time to talk. Which is good, because they have plenty to talk about. 

His immune system, in the end, does not reject the implants. Slowly, stubbornly, Cassian learns to walk again.

But the moment Kay saves deep in a permanent memory file is when, exhausted after a therapy session where he successfully navigated a room with only a cane for support, Cassian takes Kay’s hand. This is familiar to them now, this holding hands in quiet moments. He enjoys the contact and feeling the one-two rhythm of the organic pulse through his skin.

This time, Cassian doesn’t stop there. He lifts the hand and presses it to his mouth. His lips are warm and by far the softest part of Cassian he’s ever touched. He doesn’t dare move as Cassian kisses the tips of his fingers.

“Is this all right?” Cassian’s actually blushing for once. The movement of his lips lights up the sensors for warmth and pressure, and it’s nothing he hasn’t felt before, really, except that it’s everything he’s never felt before, because he knows what this means between organics. 

“Yes. It is pleasant, please continue.” He has no subroutines for kissing, but he’d like to generate some.

Meaning makes all the difference. 

~~~

“I like that you are part machine.” 

Cassian glances at Kay’s reflection in the mirror, holding the razor so he won’t nick himself. “Why?”

He’s in the refresher with the door open, and only a towel around his waist. Mostly, he does his best not to think about the fact that a section of his spine and three of his ribs weren’t born with him. Kay doesn’t understand that, he’s never troubled by having parts replaced. They’re his, _him_ , as soon as they’re installed. Cassian made the mistake of telling that to the therapist assigned to him by the medical center, who recommended Cassian try to view his implants the same way. But to him, they’re more like the chair he still uses on long trips or bad days, or the cane he uses regularly. The implants are extremely useful tools.

That Kay appreciates them helps him cope with the crawling sensation of having his body invaded by something foreign, and the phantom cold as if the metal inside him isn’t the same temperature as the rest of his bones. 

“I can’t become more like you,” Kay replies from the window of their apartment – bigger than most of the ships they’ve shared over the years, plenty of space for them – “but you are now slightly more like me. You even have a charging port.”

Cassian snorts a laugh. “Yes, so I can experience the pleasures of being plugged into a wall.”

“You are more aesthetically pleasing to look at now, as well.” That one surprises him. He hadn’t bothered to consider whether or not Kay experienced him as visually pleasing, had simply assumed that isn’t something that matters between them. Which is fine with him, he doesn’t particularly like looking at himself. Neither can he really get a good look at his own lower back.

“Really? What does it look like?” He finishes trimming his beard and washes the razor, then his face. It’s nice to be able to bend over the sink with only a small amount of discomfort. 

“The contrast of metal and skin creates more interesting data than skin alone. I recommend not doing the synthskin graft to cover the vertebrae. Perhaps paint it blue instead, as it is rare in nature and therefore would be very striking.” For someone so big, Kay is surprisingly quiet crossing the room to Cassian. His servos make more sound than his steps. There’s a pleasant thrill to having him come so close while Cassian’s back is turned. He’s undressed and undefended, and he’s not used to this yet. 

“And I like,” the droid continues, “that I can now help you with mechanical maintenance that does not include you bleeding on me.”

Now Cassian laughs outright and turns to find his nose inches from Kay’s chest. 

“That is not funny. Your blood is corrosive and your vitals are annoyingly delicate.”

“I’m not planning on any more bleeding any time soon.” He leans into Kay’s closeness, cool metal making his skin prickle. “But we’ll get you the specs and a specialty attachment for maintenance. I do like that idea better than having to go to the med center.”

Kay pats his head like he’s a particularly cute animal. “I know.”

He can’t help it. Cassian smiles. He’s still getting used to doing that and meaning it as often as he has been lately. Even if he doesn’t know what he’s going to do with this new life he’s been so unexpectedly granted, he’s going to do it with Kay. Hell, he even has a handful of organic friends now. His team.

The closest thing he’s had to a family since he was a child. 

Cassian doesn’t have a lot of practice with happiness, it’s never been particularly important to him, but all of his priorities are changing these days. Maybe he can learn. Maybe there is a future out there for him that doesn’t center on the Rebellion after all. 

His friends are very stubborn, and they seem very determined to prove they’re going to stick by him. And Kay… 

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” his partner demands. He gives Cassian’s hair a tiny tug to get his attention. 

“I’m thinking…” Cassian runs his hand over Kay’s chest, tracing a scuff mark the old chassis didn’t have. He’s getting used to this one, learning it until it is as familiar to him as his own body. “I’m really glad you’re here.”

“I’m glad we’re here, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> That's a wrap, folx! I do have a couple of related one-shots with these two fools in the works, because I just can't stop writing them apparently, so this will probably become an ongoing series.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who left kudos and comments, you've made my first multi-chapter experience truly wonderful. <3


End file.
